Late last week, it was revealed that Joaquin Phoenix left the production of Todd Haynes’ new film just a matter of days ahead of filming. No reasons were given, but there has been a lot of speculation why Phoenix would leave the project, effectively canceling the film.
READ MORE: Joaquin Phoenix Kills Todd Haynes’ Gay Detective Film By Dropping Out At The Last Minute
In a social media post (via People), producer Christine Vachon talked a bit about what happened, saying it was a “nightmare” situation. Again, when Phoenix left the project, the film was left without its star just several days before filming. Reports claim that Haynes and those involved tried to find a replacement, but nothing was able to get done.
“A version of this did happen,” wrote Vachon. “It has been a nightmare.”
As for why it might be a nightmare, the film was said to be a period detective story and focus on the relationship between two men. So, as you can imagine, sets, costumes, and everything else created for the film was built and ready to go, but now will have to be torn down. Millions of dollars are lost.
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Vachon also took the time to defend the choice of Phoenix to play a gay man in the film. Nowadays, people try to be more inclusive with casting, trying to get a gay man to play a gay role. However, in the case of this project, Vachon said that Phoenix was the one who brought the project to Haynes, so the casting was never brought into question.
She added, “And PLEASE — if you are tempted to finger wag or admonish us that ‘that’s what you get for casting a straight actor’ –DON’T. This was HIS project that he brought to US…”
It’ll be interesting to see how this situation plays out in the months to come. Will Phoenix find any blowback in his career after doing this? What will Haynes work on next? These are questions we don’t know yet, and we’ll have to wait and see.