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If your movie is set, the old adage goes, on a baseball diamond, golf course, or postapocalyptic, sea-covered Earth, then the Kevin Costner is your go-to leading man. Certainly that's what producers at Ascendant Pictures were thinking when they entered into a verbal agreement with the grouchy, divorced actor to play the "grouchy, divorced" lead in their new golf (well, at least golf-related) picture, Taming Ben Taylor. But when they called off the production, Costner got extra-grouchy:

Kevin Costner sued Ascendant Pictures on Tuesday, claiming the company broke an oral agreement to pay him $8 million to act in the romantic comedy Taming Ben Taylor. [...]


The movie was never made. The script was about a grouchy, divorced man who refuses to sell his failing vineyard to the golf course next door.

The suit should make for an interesting legal exploration of just how binding an oral agreement is in a town where "Love ya, want to work with ya!" is considered standard salutation etiquette. Power lunches just wouldn't end on the same punchy note if a producer left the talent he was courting with, "I acknowledge we have eaten together and that I am making a movie. Any other connections you may derive from this are purely circumstantial. Farewell."