‘O.J. Simpson Was Innocent’ Movie Offered Owen Wilson $12 Million to Star

Summary

• O.J. Simpson’s death hasn’t changed anyone’s mind about his perceived guilt despite being acquitted of murder. That is, except for a movie called
  The Juice
  .
• Filmmaker Joshua Newton struggled with casting for the film, initially targeting Owen Wilson for the lead role.
• Newton has overcome numerous hurdles in his filmmaking career, including technical and legal challenges in his previous work,
  Beautiful Blue Eyes
  .

Disgraced NFL athlete, actor, and celebrity O.J. Simpson passed away on April 11, and in the two weeks since then, people have hardly eulogized the man rhapsodically. Most people agree that Simpson seemed guilty of murdering his wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, despite being acquitted 30 years ago. Simpson has even morbidly teased his guilt, whether it’s in footage where he pretends to stab someone to death or it’s his book If I Did It, where the word ‘if’ is practically hidden in the title formatting. However, there’s one upcoming film that, like Alan Dershowitz, imagines Simpson as possibly innocent.

That would be The Juice (previously titled Nicole & O.J.), a strange project from a suitably eccentric filmmaker named Joshua Newton. Playing Simpson in The Juice is Boris Kodjoe, famous for Brown Sugar, Madea’s Family Reunion, the Resident Evil films (playing Luther West), and shows like Soul Food, Station 19, and The Last Man on Earth. But the main character of the film is supposedly Douglas McCann, an attorney who represented O.J. Simpson in a civil case from 2000 and went down a conspiratorial rabbit hole believing that Simpson was innocent of the 1994 murders. Newton was passionate about casting one particular person for the role — Owen Wilson.

“Owen Wilson was perfect for the role,” Newton told the Hollywood Reporter. “I actually had a meeting with him in Santa Monica. Everybody loved the script. His agent wanted him to do it. We offered him $12 million. But at the end of the lunch, Owen stood up and said, ‘If you think I’m going to take the lead role in a movie about how O.J. didn’t do it, you’ve got to be kidding me.’”

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Newton, who has been trying to get The Juice made for over a decade, now believes he’s found the right person for the part, but hasn’t shared any casting details. Currently, the film has a webpage that invites people to submit information and answer an interesting question: What would justice look like? Here’s what the webpage asks in a Google doc:

In the upcoming satirical thriller ‘The Juice,’ we explore various exaggerated ends for a notorious figure. What should justice have looked like? Let us know your most outrageous ideas, and they might just inspire what you see on screen in 2025!

The Juice Hasn’t Been Joshua Newton’s Only Difficult Production

Before The Juice (you can watch a teaser above), Newton actually directed Roy Scheider’s final film, Beautiful Blue Eyes, which was based on Newton’s father. Scheider (Jaws, All That Jazz) plays Joseph, a retired New York City cop who visits his estranged son in Germany and discovers that his son’s neighbor is the Nazi officer who killed his family in Poland during the Holocaust. Joseph then enlists his son in a kidnapping attempt to make the former Nazi officer pay for his crimes. Unfortunately, the film had both technical and legal problems. As MovieWeb explained:

“Scheider finished filming his scenes for
Beautiful Blue Eyes
, however, technical issues had caused many scenes to need to be redone, and the actor had passed away before he could reshoot any scenes. As a result, the production had to wait until the technology was able to produce a workable facsimile of Scheider to complete the production.”

Related An O.J. Simpson Documentary Became One of the Greatest Films of All Time The epic O.J.: Made in America transcends true crime to become a portrait of Simpson, America, policing, race, and so much more.

Additionally, there were legal issues that affected Beautiful Blue Eyes. A company behind the film ended up suing Variety for allegedly reneging on their six-figure contract to promote the film. Newton and others also sued Facebook for blocking the film from being promoted due to terms of service policies. On top of all that, the film was dragged into a messy and complicated “legal maze” (according to The Hollywood Reporter) between star Charlotte Kirk (who portrays Nicole Brown in The Juice) and different powerful producers involved in a dark sexual scheme.

Beautiful Blue Eyes was finally released to the masses in 2022, 13 years after it had originally finished its production. Hopefully, Newton’s new film doesn’t take nearly as long.

You can view the original article HERE.