The nightmare finally ended when Toma Bidegen made a “heartbreaking” phone call to producer Alain Attal, admitting defeat: “Our views are too far apart. We won’t be able to film in September. … It’s over, and 26 million euros are gone!”. In the end, filming finished after four days, Gyllenhaal and Kirby safely flew to the U.S. and never returned to the project, and Bidegen … wrote a new script with screenwriter Valentine Monteith. Gyllenhaal even then sort of called the producers and offered to buy out the idea, but they refused.
The film was eventually made in 2022 with French actors Gilles Lellouche and Mélanie Thierry. The film went quietly at the box office and did not arouse widespread interest in the audience, and critics reproached the director for a boring script, so in the madness of Gyllenhaal, perhaps there was salt not only sea salt.
