Alerts & Newsletters

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

‘La La Land’: Miles Teller Turned Down $4 Million Offer To Star In Damien Chazelle’s Musical – Report

That was before Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone came aboard.
Miles Teller
Shutterstock

Damien Chazelle’s musical “La La Land” was praised at the recent Venice Film Festival, where Emma Stone was awarded the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, and at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People’s Choice Award. The charming film is already garnering Oscar buzz and Stone and Ryan Gosling are a cinema match made in heaven. However, Miles Teller and Emma Watson were originally attached to the film before the “Crazy, Stupid, Love” duo came along. 

While it was known that the two actors had been circling the film, sources told the The Hollywood Reporter that the real reason Teller didn’t get the part was that he had been holding out for more money and wanted more than the $4 million offer. As he waited for a deal that never closed, the window of availability for him got shorter and instead did “Allegiant.” Plus, he would’ve had to learn how to train as a pianist for weeks before filming “La La Land” and didn’t have enough time by then.

READ MORE: ‘La La Land’ Trailer: Emma Stone Serenades Ryan Gosling in Romantic New Footage

In 2015, Teller told Esquire that he got a call from his agent telling him that Chazelle, who he worked with on “Whiplash,” thought he no longer was “creatively right for the project.” 

Chazelle was recently asked about Miles participation by Uproxx at this year’s TIFF and his controversial Esquire interview, “I probably just won’t say anything about anything he said in the interview,” the director replied. “Except what I will say is that the casting of this movie during the six years it took to get made went through lots of permutations, and it’s true there was a moment where Emma Watson and Miles Teller were doing it. And neither of those casting things wound up lasting or working out. But it was part of the up and down of this movie: that we were about to make it, we were about to not make it, about to make it, about to not make it.”

As for Watson, she went back and forth and ultimately opted to do “Beauty and the Beast.”

READ MORE: Toronto: ‘La La Land’ Wins TIFF’s People’s Choice Award; Plus All Other Award Winners Announced

Teller can next be seen in the boxing drama “Bleed for This,” out November 23. He’s also attached to Jason Hall’s drama “Thank You for Your Service” and the now-TV movie “The Divergent Series: Ascendant.”

Stay on top of the latest in film and TV breaking news! Sign up for the Email Newsletter here.

Daily Headlines
Daily Headlines covering Film, TV and more.

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Must Read
PMC Logo
IndieWire is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 IndieWire Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.