‘Collateral Beauty’ Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon Exits Project Over Creative Differences With Studio

EXCLUSIVE: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, the director of New Line Cinema’s Will Smith-starrer Collateral Beauty, has departed the drama owing to creative differences with the studio. This comes less than a month after New Line acquired worldwide rights to the pic, which stars Smith as a New York advertising executive who experiences a personal tragedy and the subsequent unconventional plan from his colleagues to break him out of his depression.

Overbrook Entertainment came aboard to co-produce the project when Smith joined to star, replacing the previously attached Hugh Jackman. Anonymous Content, PalmStar and Likely Story are also producing, and PalmStar is fully financing. Smith is still attached to the project.

Gomez-Rejon directed the Sundance smash Me And Earl And The Dying Girl, which Fox Searchlight landed in a major fest deal and released in June. PalmStar Media and Likely Story paid $2.25 million for the Collateral Beauty script but Jackman exited the project as did Rooney Mara.