It seems the love affair between Tony Scott and Denzel Washington has hit a bit of a rough patch, with the star leaving the director’s movie Unstoppable, in which he was due to play a train engineer who has to team up with the rookie brought in to replace him (Chris Pine) to stop a runaway train packed with toxic chemicals, that’s likely to derail in a small town.
It was announced a couple of weeks ago that the studio was scrutinising the budget for the movie and looking at where they could save money. One way they found was to ask Denzel Washinton to shave $4 million off his usual $20 miilion pay packet, however the star has declined and left the project instead. The role is now being shopped out to other actors, although as things stand Scott is still set to direct.
It always seems rubbish when stars turn movies down because they’re being asked to take a gargantuan pay cheque rather than an astronomical one, but it’s largely to do with agents trying to keep the actor’s asking price up. They worry that if their client accepts $16 million this time, they’ll have to take the same for the next film, and so often it purely comes down to being a business decision. Although to be honest, while Washington is a superb actor, he hasn’t actually had many big hits lately, so whether he’s actually worth $20 million in the first place is debatable.