This announcement isn’t at all surprising, and there will be more for sure in the coming days and weeks undoubtedly. Owen Wilson was scheduled to start shooting in the new Ben Stiller film “Tropic Thunder” in the next couple of weeks. His role was a small one. Word is now out that Wilson is no longer involved in the film.
Now, a bit of commentary here. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, nor should the significance of this be over-exaggerated. Some media outlets are already touting this as “Wilson’s Woes Begin”, trying to spin this as a sign that all of Hollywood is now trying to distance themselves from Wilson who. This isn’t the case. At least not yet, and hopefully will never be.
Wilson, regardless of the reason, is hospitalized. If he were in the hospital for broken ribs and they weren’t sure when they were going to heal, he would have to get out of any movie he’s supposed to start shooting in the next few weeks… especially if he was just doing a small part in it.
The bottom line is this. Wilson is out of Tropic Thunder and will probably back out of other commitments too… this doesn’t mean his career is over… it just means he’s in the hospital and they don’t know when he’s going to properly recover to work and do his job. Will the suicide attempt effect his career in some way? Yes, I’m sure it will… but HOW it will effect it and to what degree it will effect it is still yet to be seen, and quite frankly until we know more about why this incident happened, it’s just way too early and premature to speculate about it.