When Alan Horn stepped down as president and chief operating officer of Warner Bros in 2011, he gave a candid interview to The Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Masters. Discussing his ups and downs as studio head, Horn admitted his reluctance to give Eastwood the green light for “Million Dollar Baby.”
As Horn recalls, “Clint came to me in his own low-key way. He hadn’t picked anyone. I read it and thought, ‘Well, I just don’t see it.’ I thought, ‘I don’t know if women want to see a woman fight.'”
Horn’s doubts were not unreasonable. This wasn’t a martial arts action movie. It was about the blood sport of boxing. In the early 2000s, women’s MMA was still far from taking off, while women’s boxing was a blip on the sports radar (Laila Ali was a celebrated champion, but, sadly, she didn’t have significant ratings success).
Eastwood respected Horn’s opinion and received the boss’s blessing to take the project to other studios. In the end, the best thing the director could do was a potential deal with production company Lakeshore Entertainment, which offered to cover half the budget. Given the film’s reasonable $30 million price tag and Eastwood’s reputation for arriving ahead of schedule and under budget, this should have been enough to get it greenlit.
Surprisingly, Horn was still scared.
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