Matt Damon turned down 250 million dollars because he couldn’t let his friends down – and because he preferred to be a secret agent instead of a blue alien.
Matt Damon was supposed to receive a hefty fee for his role in Avatar. However, the offer put him in a conflict, as he was in the middle of shooting another film at the time. He declined the offer from director James Cameron.
And according to his own words, “it’s the dumbest thing an actor has ever done,” as you can read here from our colleagues at Filmstarts.
“We should have had this conversation in space”
Why did he turn down the offer? Matt Damon told in an interview with Chris Wallace (CNN) that he was in the middle of shooting a Bourne film and didn’t want to let the team down:
[…] I had a contract… I was in the midst of shooting the Bourne film, and I knew we had a lot of work ahead of us, and I would have to see it through to the end. And I would have had to leave the film a little early and let them down a bit, and I didn’t want to do that.
Matt Damon via Mediaite
Chris Wallace commented that the Bourne series could possibly have been postponed if Matt Damon had known that “Avatar was the highest-grossing film of all time” and moreover, he would receive 10% of the revenue (via Mediaite). That amounted to according to Moviepilot ultimately around 250 million dollars.
However, Matt Damon didn’t want to let his friends down. He recalled his favorite reaction. This came from his acting colleague John Krasinski (A Quiet Place):
We wrote this little film called “Promised Land” a long time ago, and we were in my kitchen on a Saturday morning and had a break.
I’m telling him about Avatar and he jumps out of his chair, starts pacing in the kitchen, and says: “Okay, okay, okay. Okay, okay. Nothing in your life would be different today if you had made that film, except that you and I would be having this conversation in space.”
Matt Damon via Mediaite
After that, Matt Damon noted that even with the role in Avatar he would still be the “same guy”, only he would have had a space station.
The director of Avatar, James Cameron, advised Matt Damon to get over it. He even contemplated giving Damon a cameo in the upcoming Avatar films. You can find more about this here from our colleagues at Moviepilot.
Will Smith also turned down a role. Keanu Reeves made his international breakthrough as the protagonist Neo in The Matrix. However, he was not the first choice for the main role; that was Will Smith.
However, he turned down the role as Neo because of the quirky concept and instead participated in another sci-fi film – which flopped massively:
Will Smith talks about one of the worst decisions of his career: “Why didn’t you do The Matrix?”
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