Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck in Armageddon is a Story Well Known of Regret and Embarrassment. For years – decades, in fact – the two stars and A-listers have unabashedly participated in their own critical self-assessment when it comes to the subject of the soul-crushing dejection felt almost immediately after the novelty of the Disney film’s stellar success wore off.
For Affleck, Armageddon may just be the most regrettable career choice to date, even though he recalled, at the time, the paycheck amounted to 20 years’ worth of his mother’s salary. But Affleck is not the only one left seething. in the build-up to such a commercially successful film, yet critically panned in hindsight, the in-house drama that went down between the studio and the film’s other A-lister is quite the tale to be told.
Bruce Willis and Disney Come to a Head About a Rom-Com
It’s not every day that one of the world’s biggest stars in the making throws a fit, wastes more than half the production’s budget, gets everyone (including the film’s Oscar-winning director) fired, and decidedly damages the process so much that the studio decides to shelve it a month into filming. That is exactly what unraveled on the sets of Broadway Brawler – a Bruce Willis and Maura Tierney starring rom-com.
Also read: Why Michael Bay’s Armageddon Is A Much Better Movie Than You Remember
After the derailing of the film, Disney – instead of trudging down the messier path of suing the actor for losses incurred – came up with a better plan. A contract was negotiated for the Die Hard star to commit to three films for the studio. The collaboration would end up giving rise to three of the greatest films of Willis’ career in the 90s, catapulting both him and the House of Mouse into such wealth and fame that Willis would be established as an A-lister and Disney would go on to annex the two industry juggernauts: Marvel and Lucasfilm.
But at the time, had Disney head, Joe Roth not come up with the 3-movie contract, the recompense being asked of Bruce Willis was $17.5 million if the studio sued. The first of the three films that the actor made for Disney became the critically divisive $553 million horror fest, Armageddon. The remainder of the two were The Sixth Sense and The Kid.
Bruce Willis Threw a Wrench in Disney’s Well-Oiled Plans
A studio of such a huge multitude as the Walt Disney Company barely stops churning in the aftermath of one $28 million production’s failure. There would be opportunities to bounce back from the losses for the studio and the coveted actor who was still riding on the high from Die Hard 3 and Pulp Fiction. But for the rest of the elements involved, the scenario spelled the doom of the greatest measure. Lee Grant, the Oscar-winning director who was supposed to helm the film before Willis’ antics, claimed:
“It was our project. We went to [Willis] because we knew he would be perfect for it. He was marvelous in it but he was cursed with not being able to see how marvelous he was.”
Cinematographer, and fellow collateral victim, William Fraker claimed: “Lee was doing a great job. Bruce was telling other actors how to act. It was a great script… But Bruce just took over.” The inherent tension and dissatisfaction with the production were palpable in their later recounting of the incident. Grant never recovered and only went on to only make one significant appearance in David Fincher’s Mulholland Drive.
Source: Film Stories
