15 Years Ago, Bruce Willis’ Clash With Kevin Smith Resulted In A Big Box Office Flop

(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)

“I know the real story. One guy wouldn’t even sit for a f**kin’ poster shoot.” Those are the words of director Kevin Smith, speaking with Marc Maron on a January 2011 episode of his podcast “WTF.” Smith was coming off of his 2010 studio comedy “Cop Out,” which starred “Die Hard” legend Bruce Willis and “SNL” alum Tracy Morgan as a pair of odd-couple cops. Needless to say, Smith had a tough time making the film. Also worth saying, Smith wasn’t disheartened because of Morgan. “Were it not for Tracy, I might’ve killed myself or someone else in the making of that movie,” Smith added.

Smith, who made himself known to the world with his beloved 1994 hit indie “Clerks,” was coming off of the box office disappointment that was “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.” What looked to be his Judd Apatow-esque mainstream breakout hit turned out to be a bit of a misfire commercially. For his follow-up, the filmmaker went full studio by teaming with Warner Bros. for a two-hander, big-budget comedy with one of the most beloved movie stars of all time. It would prove to be another commercial dud, one that left a lasting impression on Smith and altered the course of his career.

In this week’s Tales from the Box Office, we’re looking back at “Cop Out” in honor of its 15th anniversary. We’ll go over how it came to be, why the title had to change, what went down behind the scenes with Willis, what happened when it hit theaters, what happened in the years after its release, and what we can learn from it all these years later. Let’s dig in, shall we?

The film centers on veteran detective Jimmy Monroe (Willis) who needs money to pay for his daughter’s upcoming wedding. He decides to sell his prized ’52 Pafko baseball card, but it’s stolen before he can collect the cash. As a result, Jimmy and his partner Paul (Morgan) must confront a gangster who is obsessed with sports memorabilia to track down this prized possession.

Written by Rob and Mark Cullen, the film started life as a screenplay titled “A Couple of Dicks” that made it onto The Black List, which is an unofficial list of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood. The script made its way to Warner Bros. and, eventually, into Smith’s hands. This would be the first time that Smith would ever direct a movie he didn’t write. It would also be the last. 

“The whole movie is like cops who are practically married but not actually, and, I mean, that’s right up my alley. It’s like Dante and Randall [from ‘Clerks’] as cops,” Smith said to Vulture in 2009. Smith actually took a pay cut to direct “Cop Out” in part because he wanted to keep it R-rated, but also because he was so excited at the prospect of working with Willis. “For anyone who says ‘He just sold out, he’s just going for the buck’ — I’m making less to make this movie than I did on ‘Dogma,’ which is a movie I made 10 years ago and didn’t make a lot of money,” Smith said in March 2009.

Willis had not done an outright comedy in a long time, whereas that was firmly in Smith’s wheelhouse. But the $30 million budget was far more than Smith was accustomed to working with. He was, however, accustomed to working with Willis, as the director had a small role in 2007’s “Live Free or Die Hard.” They had an established relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

In his book “Tough Sh*t,” Smith described Willis as “the most dour” person he’s ever met. An entire chapter is dedicated to Smith’s time making the film, and it is not an upbeat one. “If I wrote the real story in the book, it’d be way worse,” Smith later said at a San Diego Comic-Con panel in 2012. Put mildly, Willis was not the man Smith hoped he would be. According to Smith, he was uncooperative, late, and difficult. In that same interview on “WTF,” Smith made it crystal clear how he felt.

“It was difficult. I’ve never been involved in a situation like that where, one component is not in the box at all. It was f**kin soul crushing. I mean, a lot of people are gonna be like, ‘Oh, you’re just trying to blame the movie on him.’ No, but I had no f**king help from this dude whatsoever.” 

But some tried to shift the blame to Smith himself. “He smokes way too much pot. He sat behind his monitor. He didn’t interact with the actors. The actors felt they were on their own,” a talent rep who worked on the production said of Smith to The Hollywood Reporter in 2011. Smith fought back against that characterization. The point is, the whole thing was ugly and the vibes on set were clearly bad. Willis’ camp even released a statement trying to calm down rumors that the two didn’t get along on set.

“There is absolutely no rift between Bruce Willis and Kevin Smith. Bruce very much enjoyed working with Kevin Smith as well as his co-star Tracy Morgan. The only reason Mr. Willis was not at the wrap party for the film is that he was in Los Angeles taking part in a press junket and press activities for his movie Surrogates.”

There are near-countless hours of Smith discussing the Bruce Willis/”Cop Out” situation, making it truly difficult to distill. What matters is that a script with promise was corrupted by a dysfunctional set. Despite having by all accounts a great screenplay and a great supporting cast, one that also included the likes of Seann William Scott (“American Pie”), Rashida Jones (“Parks and Recreation”), and Michelle Trachtenberg (“Gossip Girl”), who recently passed away, the end result failed greatly to live up to expectations.

Warner Bros. did their best to market the film, which is part of why the title was changed. Unfortunately, the end result was a movie very few critics got behind, making things exceedingly complicated, particularly since the budget ballooned closer to $40 million. The marketing was clever. The above trailer is leaning into the fact that Warner Bros. had made some classic cop films over the years. It’s a fun hook, but it only went so far.

“Cop Out” hit theaters on February 26, 2010, taking in a respectable $18.2 million. Smith’s comedy had to settle for second place as Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” was in the middle of its big box office run, topping the charts with $22.6 million. Unfortunately, lackluster reviews and competition from Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” among others, meant the film dropped sharply in the coming weeks, falling out of the top ten entirely by mid-March.

Smith’s buddy comedy finished its run with $44.8 million domestically to go with a weak $10.7 million overseas for a grand total of $55.6 million worldwide. With a smaller budget and better reviews, who knows what could’ve happened? As it exists though, the movie was a sizable flop. Yet, somewhat ironically, it’s still the highest-grossing feature of Smith’s career.

“He changed everything for me though. Because now I’ll never meet anybody. That was it. I’d rather like people from a distance,” Smith said of Willis on that “WTF” interview. The experience left a mark on him, with Smith also taking aim at film critics in the years that followed. “So many critics lined-up to pull a sad & embarrassing train on ‘Cop Out’ like it was Jennifer Jason Leigh in ‘Last Exit to Brooklyn’ watching them beat the s*** out of it [it] was sad,” Smith said in an infamous Twitter rant in 2010.

Smith then went back to his indie roots with the action/horror flick “Red State,” in addition to leaning into podcasting. He hasn’t made another studio movie since and, for a time, was even threatening to leave the world of directing behind entirely. Smith’s tune changed following his heart attack seven years ago, an event that even influenced “Clerks 3.” Still, for much of that time, he didn’t have much nice to say about Willis or “Cop Out.”

Time does have a way of changing things. In 2022, it was revealed that Bruce Willis was retiring from acting due to his Aphasia diagnosis. This sent shockwaves through Hollywood, with love and support flowing in for the beloved action star. Smith, taking to Twitter at the time, apologized for everything he’d said about the actor over the years:

“Long before any of the ‘Cop Out’ stuff, I was a big Bruce Willis fan, so this is really heartbreaking to read. He loved to act and sing and the loss of that has to be devastating for him. I feel like an a**hole for my petty complaints from 2010. So sorry to [Bruce Willis] and his family.”

Willis hasn’t said much about the experience since the press tour wrapped up. For him, it was onto the next thing. For what it’s worth, other directors have expressed some irritation with Willis over the years, with Antoine Fuqua calling him a “pain in my ass” while directing “Tears of the Sun.” So it’s not like Smith is some singular outlier.

Whether or not Smith looks back differently on “Cop Out” in earnest 15 years later is something only he can know. What’s true is that he’s certainly more accepting of it now, even holding a 15th anniversary screening at his own Smodcastle Cinemas recently with Tracy Morgan on hand. At the very least, Smith has let the bitterness go. There’s something to be said about that as far as a life lessons go, more than one about the business of filmmaking. On a similar note, there is something to the whole “don’t meet your heroes” thing. Actors aren’t the people they portray on screen.

For filmmakers out there, there is a square peg, round hole thing going on here. Smith wanted a change after what happened with “Zack and Miri,” but interpreting other people’s work with big movie stars in the studio system didn’t allow him to thrive. The downfall of “Cop Out” can’t purely be attributed to the friction between Willis and Smith. Am I suggesting that filmmakers shouldn’t branch out beyond their comfort zone? Of course not, but there’s something to be said for trying to make something happen. It rarely pans out.

As for the Bruce Willis of it all, Hollywood has a tendency to think stars = success. Can that be true? Absolutely. But getting Willis increased the budget and created an unhealthy working environment. Might this comedy have thrived with a different duo? It’s certainly worth wondering. Star power isn’t always the answer.