According to a recent report in the Hollywood Reporter, actor Owen Wilson turned down an offer to star in a movie called “The Juice” that portrays O.J. Simpson as innocent. Shooting down the offer involved turning down a $12 million payday, but Wilson apparently told the filmmaker behind the project, described as being a “satirical thriller,” that it was “crazy” to think he’d be in a movie portraying Simpson as innocent.
Apparently, the movie shows Simpson as being innocent of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, his ex-wife, and her friend, Ron Goldman. Though Simpson was acquitted in 1995, many believe he was guilty, particularly given that he was found liable in 1997 in a civil trial brought by the families of the murder victims.
British filmmaker Joshua Newton, the filmmaker behind the project, apparently wanted Wilson to play Douglas McCann, an attorney involved in the case who was particularly sucked into conspiracy theories surrounding it. Newton said that Wilson would be “perfect” for the role, but Wilson apparently turned him down flat.
Such is what Newton told the Rambling Reporter, as The Hollywood Reporter reported, noting that Wilson met with Newton to discuss the role but turned it down by the end of the lunch, saying he wouldn’t be the lead in a movie that portrayed O.J. as innocent of the murders.
Newton said, “Owen Wilson was perfect for the role.” He continued, “I actually had a meeting with him in Santa Monica. Everybody loved the script. His agent wanted him to do it. We offered him $12 million. But at the end of the lunch, Owen stood up and said, ‘If you think I’m going to take the lead role in a movie about how O.J. didn’t do it, you’ve got to be kidding me.’”
Newton also told the Rambling Reporter, The Hollywood Reporter noted, that he managed to find another actor to play the role and that that replacement was “spot on,” though he declined to say who accepted the offer to play the part. Newton also claimed that he has managed to finish about 30 minutes of the movie and aims to have it completed by October 3, the 29th anniversary of Simpson’s acquittal in the murder case.
Simpson was back in the news this year after he died from cancer at the age of 76, putting him back in the news. He had, in addition to the criminal and civil trials stemming from the murder of his ex-wife and Goldman, been in legal trouble over an armed robbery and kidnapping of which he was found guilty in 2007. He then spent nine years in prison for those crimes and was released on parole in 2017, on which he remained until released from parole in 2021. Simpson also received much notoriety for his “If I Did It” memoir that provided a supposedly fictional tale of how he would have committed the murders if he was guilty; the profits from it went to Goldman’s family, which still had not been paid the sum awarded them in the civil case.
Featured image credit: By Picture taken by me User:Absinthe88 – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1597044
"*" indicates required fields