Actress Who Turned Down $5M for Script Gets Happy Ending

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done? Madeleine Stowe probably has you beat.

The actress, fairly well known for roles in movies like The Last of the Mohicans and 12 Monkeys, co-wrote her first script, the period thriller Unbound Captives, and began to shop it around to studios in 2003. According to Variety, she was first offered $3 million and later $5 million, a sum even top writers in Hollywood can't always command (the studio saw it was a potential project for Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott).

She promptly turned it down—first the $3 million, then the $5 million. She didn’t want her involvement to stop there, a string attached to the studio offer.

She had a co-starring stint in mind, but now, six years later, she’s landed a top-shelf cast to make the movie her directorial debut. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz will now occupy the star roles in the film, which follows a woman who tries to save her kidnapped children with the help of a frontiersman. Twilight megawatt Robert Pattinson is committed to play one of the kids.

Nice to hear a happy ending, but—$5 million, for finished work? That's rough.

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