10 Actors You Had No Idea Produced Awesome Movies
5. Robert De Niro - Rent
Robert De Niro is a Hollywood legend. While you may not be surprised to learn that he helped produce films he starred in like Meet the Fockers and more recently The Irishman on Netflix, you might raise an eyebrow to learn he helped produce 2005's Rent.
Surely he took the Matt LeBlanc and Eva Longoria approach to producing, right?
Well...
It was 1996. The movie rights for the musical Rent were up for grabs and multiple studios were making offers to land the deal. Who won the bid war? Robert De Niro and Miramax Films, who out-bid Warner Bros., Fine Line, and even Universal. And if that wasn't peculiar enough, to add the cherry on top of this weird chocolate cake, they wanted to get Martin Scorsese to direct it.
Scorsese was more than just considered. He saw rough drafts of the screenplay itself before ultimately deciding against directing the movie. It does make you wonder how different the movie might've been compared to what we got if he had stayed on board.