(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sat 20 September 2025 16:15, UK
In 2008, a movie with the chucklesome title A Couple of Dicks appeared on the annual Black List, a collection of the most acclaimed unproduced screenplays in Hollywood.
With a title like that, which is so clearly designed to grab people’s attention, it was no surprise that the script caused a stir. Suddenly, Robin Williams was in talks to star in the film, which wasn’t some kind of sex-crazed romp; instead, it was a buddy cop comedy penned by brothers Mark and Robb Cullen that played on the old-fashioned slang for the word ‘detective’. Get it!?
Unfortunately, this hilarious title didn’t make it any easier to get A Couple of Dicks made. The title turned out (surprise, surprise) to be a bridge too far for the largely humourless executives who populate Hollywood, and the Cullens changed it twice: first to A Couple of Cops, which sucks, and then to Cop Out, which is pretty darn funny when you consider the story behind the change.
At some point during this tumultuous period, Williams officially signed up for the film, which was being made by the production company Gold Circle Films. His deal stipulated a $6million payday, whether or not the movie actually got made or not – or, at least, he thought it did. Imagine his surprise, then, when Gold Circle put the film in turnaround, and it was quickly snapped up by Warner Bros, who cast Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, and lined it up for a 2010 release.
The next thing Gold Circle knew, it was being sued by Williams’ loan-out company, Fiat Risus, who claimed it had reneged on an agreed pay-or-play deal with the Mrs Doubtfire star. In response, Gold Circle’s legal team presented evidence that an email was sent to Williams’ people emphatically stating that the company didn’t agree to his terms, so no deal was ever finalised. Before long, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled in Gold Circle’s favour, and its lawyer came out swinging against Williams, who never publicly commented on the matter.
“It’s unfortunate that Robin Williams’ attorneys insisted on pursuing this lawsuit when it never should have been filed in the first place,” stated attorney Michael Holtz pointedly. “We always believed this case lacked merit, and the court obviously agreed.” He even announced that he would be seeking recovery of the legal fees Gold Circle accrued fighting the tenuous case, which didn’t even pass go.
In the end, the whole sorry affair did little more than make Williams seem petty, with the A-list icon somehow managing to cast a Hollywood production company in the role of the little guy fighting back against the money-grubbing elite. He may have dodged a bullet, too, because Cop Out was a disaster upon release, with director Kevin Smith having a nightmare on his first attempt at directing a script he didn’t write.
Smith admitted to clashing constantly with Willis, his childhood hero, while making the movie, and wrote in his book Secret Stash, “Cop Out could have been a great experience if it were not for the fact that I met true darkness in Bruce Willis. I love making movies, and he does not, at all.”
He later apologised for this comment and others like it after Willis’ aphasia diagnosis was announced in 2022, as he conceded the star could have been suffering from those effects even as early as 2010. Still, it wasn’t a fun experience for anyone involved.
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