How Hollywood Insures Against Actors Behaving Badly
Director Ridley Scott decided to remove Kevin Spacey (pictured) from a finished movie, All the Money in the World, and refilm scenes with a substitute actor, Christopher Plummer, in the role of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.
Photographer: TriStar Pictures/Entertainment Pictures/ZUMAPRESS
The Sony film All the Money in the World seemed to have everything going for it: a gripping story about the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III; an experienced director in Ridley Scott; and a bankable cast including Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Williams—and Kevin Spacey as Getty’s petrocrat grandfather.
Cue public-relations disaster. Accusations by actor Anthony Rapp of sexual misconduct by Spacey 31 years earlier, when Rapp was 14, prompted Sony Corp. and Scott to drop the Oscar winner from the cast in November, even though the film had already been shot and the trailer had been viewable for weeks online. Spacey said he didn’t remember the encounter and apologized for his behavior. Imperative Entertainment LLC, which produced the film, proceeded to spend $10 million—a quarter of the movie’s original budget—to hire Christopher Plummer as a replacement and reshoot Spacey’s scenes. Imperative declined to comment for this story.