Joaquin Phoenix’s sudden exit from film sparks ‘huge outrage’ in Hollywood

Move has prompted talk of legal action

Joaquin Phoenix’s abrupt departure from a gay romance film has reportedly sparked “huge outrage” in Hollywood and could lead to legal action.

The Joker star was set to lead the untitled detective love story – that he had taken to director Todd Haynes in the first place – but five days before production was scheduled to begin, he made the last-minute decision to drop out of the film after getting “cold feet”, a source told Variety.

Entire sets had been built in Guadalajara, Mexico, where shooting had been due to take place. Phoenix abandoned the project in early July just days before the scheduled shoot, leaving cast and crew in the lurch.

Now, reports are emerging that legal action could ensue, after the decision sparked backlash from industry veterans.

“There’s been a huge amount of outrage,” one studio executive told The Hollywood Reporter. The publication cited sources suggesting the decision could lead to legal action.

The Oscar-winning actor has been known to be anxious in the run-up to a movie, with THR reporting that Phoenix nearly dropped out of the 2023 biopic Napoleon, inisting that his trusted The Master filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson was brought on board to do rewrites.

There is some precedent for actors having to make amends for alleged breaches of contract after abandoning a project, including Kim Basinger’s breach of a verbal contract to star in Boxing Helena in 1993, and Bruce Willis being made to star in three Disney films to make up for dropping out of Broadway Brawler mid-production.

Produced by Killer Films and backed by sales agent MK2 Film, Phoenix’s movie had already been sold to international distributors. Variety further reports that the actor’s role cannot be recast, leaving the crew out of work and investors unpaid, and meaning that losses could surpass seven figures.

In July, Top Gun: Maverick actor Danny Ramirez signed on to play Phoenix’s love interest.

(Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

Phoenix is set to promote his forthcoming Joker sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, in the coming weeks, with the collapse of the Haynes project threatening to overshadow his publicity tour.

In the past, the actor told Anderson Cooper that he is often “petrified” when accepting a role and worries he won’t “find the right kind of place to express” his ideas.

Director Haynes, best known for helming queer movies such as the Oscar-nominated Carol (2015) and last year’s May December, first teased the project in a 2023 interview with Variety. He had described it as “a love story between two men set in the [1930s] that has explicit sexual content.”

Haynes added that the movie – which was set to be rated NC-17 (the rating given to films containing material inappropriate for people under the age of 17) – was going to feature a relationship that “challenges” audiences.

“[Phoenix] had fragments of ideas and then I started to formulate them into an actual narrative,” Haynes told the outlet, adding that “Joaquin was pushing it further into more dangerous territory, sexually”.