Kevin Costner played a Major League Baseball pitcher in the 1999 drama “For the Love of the Game,” directed by Sam Raimi. While promoting the movie prior to the its release, Costner chose to publicly diss it. An issue was some racy dialogue that was cut in order for the film to maintain a PG-13 rating, thus increasing its potential at the box office. Costner, however, viewed the cuts as compromising the film’s artistic integrity, and accused the studio that produced the movie, Universal Pictures, of selling out.
“For Universal, this movie has always been about the length and the rating,” he said in a 1999 interview with Newsweek. “It’s never been about the content. You feel a studio would want to release the best version of the movie, not the one they think appeals to the biggest common denominator … The love of the movies, I believe, is waning [in Hollywood].”
Costner’s words rankled Stacey Snider, who was then co-chair of Universal Pictures, and apparently the target of the actor’s ire. “Kevin’s not the director and it’s not fair for him to hijack a $50-million asset,” Snider sniped to the Los Angeles Times. “I realize this is very much about principle for Kevin, but principle doesn’t mean that you never compromise. Our feeling is that we have backed the filmmaker and his name is Sam Raimi, not Kevin Costner.”
