In 2002, Brad Pitt walked off a Darren Aronofsky film called The Fountain, seven weeks before cameras rolled. Warner Bros had already sunk $18 million. Around 400 crew members in Australia lost their jobs overnight, and the finished sets were auctioned off.
Pitt still owed Warner Bros a movie. That debt became Troy.
So the role he spent years regretting began as a legal settlement. He trained six months for a character he accepted to avoid an exit fee, then tore his Achilles tendon playing Achilles.
Then the story flips. Aronofsky rebuilt The Fountain at half the budget with Hugh Jackman. The passion project Pitt abandoned over creative differences grossed $16 million. The contractual punishment he hated grossed $497 million.
And Troy was the first film ever produced by Plan B, the company Pitt had founded months earlier. Plan B went on to win Best Picture for 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight.
The movie he calls a mistake built the company behind his greatest wins.
The act itself does not move me, but In a world of 8 billion finding the other person who is the same sort of insane to do with with you is terribly romantic