This film could have given Brad Pitt his biggest role, but it was cancelled following a tragic incident

Director Ron Howard was planning a biopic until his subject committed a murder and ruined his plans for several years. The project eventually became “A Beautiful Mind.”

A film project by director Ron Howard starring Brad Pitt was canceled by a tragic incident. He intended to portray an extraordinary life story on screen, but the man who was the subject of his film committed an irreparable act that ended the project.

At first, a fascinating subject

During the 1990s, Ron Howard met a Yale law professor, Michael Lauder. Lauder had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in his twenties, and fought the illness with proper treatment and a lot of experience living with his delusions (in the first sense of the word) and hallucinations.

Quoted by the Los Angeles TimesRon Howard remembered Lauder from that period in 2002: “He saw his life as a television screen, with moments of delirium pushed to the corner of the screen, but he could have four active hallucinations at the same time.” Only the center of the screen was true.

Brad Pitt as a schizophrenic

Brad Pitt had just played inmate Jeffrey in “12 Monkeys”

Fascinated, the filmmaker considered in 1995 to make a feature film centered on the professor and entitled “Laws of Madness”. The story of a man capable of managing his delusions and his pathology to obtain a law degree at Yale University is inspiring and could interest the public.

He bought the film rights to Lauder's life for $1.5 million and considered Brad Pitt for the lead role. Except that in 1997, Lauder's father died and the brilliant law professor stopped his treatment. The psychotic episodes multiplied and led him to murder his pregnant fiancée in 1998.

The film project was immediately halted, and Lauder, 37, was sentenced to a psychiatric institution in July 2000. Brad Pitt went on to make Meet Joe Black and then Fight Club, and Ron Howard directed Live on Ed TV.

The project relaunched… and 4 Oscars to boot!

It was not until 2000 that the filmmaker decided to return to his subject, this time using the mathematician John Nash, Nobel Prize winner in economics and suffering from schizophrenic illness, as a model. His biography by Sylvia Nasar was adapted for the big screen by Akiva Goldsman, and Russell Crowe, a star since Gladiator, was chosen to play him.

The film, titled A Beautiful Mind, was a box office success and won four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress for Jennifer Connelly. Ron Howard was right, there was indeed an inspiring journey here, strong enough to touch the public.