By The other day came the news that Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix had suddenly dropped out of “Carol” filmmaker Todd Haynes’ upcoming untitled 1930s gay detective noir film in late July – just five days away from the start of filming.
Reports indicated that sets were already built down in Guadalajara, Mexico; international sales were already set and a bunch of crew was assembled – but Phoenix never left Los Angeles.
After Phoenix’s exit, producers have spent the past few weeks scrambling to try and save the project to no avail – and as a result the film is ‘completely dead’.
Now, the film’s veteran producer Christine Vachon has confirmed the news on her Facebook account according to People. She reportedly says: “a version of this did happen”. Vachon, who has worked with Haynes since the 1990s and runs the Killer Films production company, added that what’s happening now is a “nightmare”.
Some have speculated Phoenix might have gotten cold feet regarding the film’s graphicness, but Vachon says that Phoenix is the one who came up with the idea of the film in the first place – bringing the project to Haynes with the pair developing it alongside author Jon Raymond (“Mildred Pierce”):
“If you are tempted to finger wag or admonish us that ‘that’s what you get for casting a straight actor [in a gay role]’ – DON’T. This was HIS project that he brought to US.”
In fact Haynes stated to IndieWire last year that Phoenix was the one pushing to “go further” with the explicit scenes to the point of the film likely garnering an NC-17 rating.
Haynes also said at the time: “The whole experience was prompted by Joaquin. It was prompted by his daring, his desire to push through barriers and to really get into the uncomfortable places about this relationship.”
Questions still remain, the biggest obviously being as to why Phoenix dropped out so suddenly. There’s also how questions of how this will impact him going forward, will those who already put a bunch of work into the project get paid, and how badly Killer Films will be impacted by this? Whatever the answers, it’s likely not going to be pretty.
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