Ethan Hawke says Johnny Depp and Russell Crowe “broke” director Peter Weir

nme.com:

Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp are partly responsible for director Peter Weir’s 12-year absence from Hollywood.READ MORE: The Black Phone review: Ethan Hawke smashes it as a masked bogeymanIn a recent interview with IndieWire, Hawke was asked why the Dead Poet’s Society director, who’s set to receive an honorary Oscar, hasn’t made a film since 2010’s The Way Back.“I think he lost interest in movies,” said Hawke. “He really enjoyed that work when he didn’t have actors giving him a hard time.

Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp broke him.”Crowe starred in Weir’s 2003 period epic Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World.

Depp, meanwhile, was set for a lead role in a film adaptation of Shantaram, but Weir left the project before it started in 2014.

A spokesperson for Warner Bros. said at the time: “Peter moved on from this film because his interpretation of it differed greatly than that of the studio and producers.”Hawke hasn’t worked with Weir since 1989’s Dead Poet Society, and when asked about the possibility of future collaborations, he appeared doubtful.“He’s someone so rare these days, a popular artist,” Hawke explained. “He makes mainstream movies that are artistic.“I think Harrison Ford and Gerard Depardieu were his sort of actors,” he added, in reference to the stars of Weir films Witness and Green Card. “They were director-friendly and didn’t see themselves as important.”Back in March, Hawke admitted that he was “scared” about the future of entertainment, noting a decline in the amount of director-driven projects.“I get scared when things get less director-driven,” he told GQ. “I’m scared of streaming, I can’t stand the word content.“It starts to make me feel like we’re devising a world like Wall-E where people.