Jake Gyllenhaal's Behavior Defended By Troubled Movie's Director

French director Thomas Bidegain is clarifying Jake Gyllenhaal and Vanessa Kirby's departure from his film Suddenly. "Four Days to Bury a Movie," an article containing an interview with Bidegain in the French magazine Technikart last week made headlines due to some wild allegations. According to the interview, Gyllenhaal and Kirby left the film in Iceland during its final pre-production stages, which resulted in a $26 million loss.

Gyllenhaal allegedly dove into the icy sea, demanded numerous rewrites, and had a wildly fluctuating temperament. Biegain told Variety that the split came about over a creative clash, not from any unprofessional behavior from Gyllenhaal. Despite what is implied in the French article, he says the company that financed Suddenly, Studiocanal, didn't lose $26 million since the project wasn't in production when the leads fell out.

"People don't understand how a film is made. We were not shooting, and we were not in pre-production. The tentative date of the shoot was eight weeks away," Bidegain said. "This project came together during the pandemic, so we had only discussed via Zoom. We would talk every week, but we had not met to talk about the film.

"So I came up with the idea of setting up that week in Iceland to read the script together, with Jake and Vanessa," Bidegain continued. "I thought it would be good to meet there, since it was where we were thinking of shooting the movie, and it's a beautiful place." Gyllenhaal, along with Alain Attal's Tresor Films, had become a producer on the film within about a year, and he was keen to contribute more creatively.

"I'd send the updated script every week, and had a nice back-and-forth with [Pulitzer Prize-winning author] David Lindsay-Abaire, who was working with Jake on the development," Bidegain said. "We had just done a new version of the script that incorporated the latest changes, and I did a lot of Zooms with Jake and Vanessa, so I thought the three of us were on the same page. So when we met in Iceland, I assumed that we would just put the finishing touches on it."

Bidegain, addressing the stars' rewrite demands, said: "But when we started reading the script in the same room, we realized that we didn't have at all the same vision of what the film was meant to be. They wanted more and more changes. It's normal when there are changes to the script before shooting, but this was different. We each had our own idea of what the message of the film was. I tried to smooth things over once, twice — and then I just realized it wasn't going to work out, so it had to stop."

According to the article, the tipping point came when Gyllenhaal encountered a horse on a walk in the wilderness and decided the film should be "about love of nature." According to Bidegain in the article, Kirby envisioned the film with a feminist edge and a radical conclusion. In essence, Bidegain's vision lies somewhere in the middle. "It's a film about love, but also love of nature, and it does have a strong female character."

Afterward, Bidegain claims Kirby contacted him about buying the script. "She was interested by the script. She has a production company," he said. "I said 'no.'"

Attal and Studiocanal remained on board as producers and distributors of Suddenly, which was made with a French cast including Gilles Lellouche and Melanie Thierry for half the budget. In France, the film Soudain seuls was released on Dec. 6 and had a modest box office run, selling about 250,000 tickets.

Bidegain is one of France's most accomplished screenwriters. He was to make his English debut with Suddenly. Bidegain said he faced difficulties on Suddenly as a result of having never worked with an actor who was also a producer. 

"It's a very strange experience when you work with an actor-producer who doesn't have the same vision than the director — in France, the director is the one in charge of the telling the story, and he's in charge of the script, the set design, etc.," Bidegain said. Ultimately, this conflict caused the split, according to Bidegain, who added, "We have very different ways to make films in France and in the U.S."

In response to Gyllenhaal's departure from the project, Studiocanal said: "Creative differences are very normal, if unfortunate, regularities in film development. In this case, there were concerns which simply could not be overcome despite great efforts on both sides."