In the 2000s, George Clooney and Brad Pitt became an iconic on-screen duo because of the Ocean’s trilogy and the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading. Now, the two real-life pals are teaming up again for the 2024 movie release Wolfs for Apple. Now, the film’s writer/director Jon Watts has opened up about how he nabbed the actors for his original action comedy, and there’s a hilarious way it all came together.
Jon Watts is famously the filmmaker behind the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man movies. Following the behemoth success of No Way Home, he decided to step away from Marvel Studios and pursue Wolfs. The writer/director first pitched the movie to George Clooney, and here’s how Watts described that meeting to THR:
It was a very easy pitch to George: It’s like two Michael Claytons.
The two-hander follows two fixers who usually work alone and find themselves having to work together after they are both hired for the same job.
But after Watts got Clooney on board, he was warned by the actor about pitching to Pitt:
‘Brad’s going to be tough. He’s very picky about his projects.’ [Clooney] is like, ‘You really want to have this really dialed in when you pitch to Brad.’
Jon Watts recalled not sleeping the night before due to George Clooney’s words about what it would take to get Brad Pitt for Wolfs. So, he was surprised when the Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood actor jumped on the call and said this before he even had a chance to make his case:
‘Two fixers. Same job. I get it, man.’
A stunned Jon Watts then asked if Brad Pitt would still like to hear the pitch he had prepared for him. Here’s how the actor apparently responded:
‘Nah. George told me the whole thing. It’ll be fun. Let’s do it.’ And that was my pitch to Brad Pitt. They were just fucking with me from the beginning.
That’s right, the two buddies actually pranked the Wolfs filmmaker into believing that Pitt would play hardball, when, in reality, Clooney was going to call him up and get him invested from the beginning. Classic.
Now, it’s not entirely surprising that this happened, given that the two actors are both rather infamous for pranks. For example, on Ocean’s 12 Pitt got Clooney really good by putting out letters to the crew about how he preferred to be named, and it made the Danny Ocean actor “the maddest” Matt Damon had ever seen him.
While filming Wolfs, Clooney and Pitt apparently had a blast working together again, especially considering they are longtime friends. So much so that they started talking about a sequel for Wolfs, which has since been greenlit. Therefore, even though Watts probably didn’t love getting pranked, it was very worth it in the long run and hilarious in hindsight.
To see how Pitt and Clooney’s famous friendship is translated onto the screen for this film, check out the Wolfs trailer below:
Man, is it great to see these movie stars back in the same film? It’s just too bad Wolfs is only going to have a limited theatrical release before arriving to those with an AppleTV+ subscription. You can look for it on your local big screen on September 20 before it hits streaming on September 27.