Bill Murray wishes he hadn’t rejected Clint Eastwood's Heartbreak Ridge: Find out why and the film’s box office numbers

Bill Murray regrets passing on Heartbreak Ridge, a war comedy Clint Eastwood offered him in the 1980s. Here’s why he turned it down and how the film performed at the box office.

Written by Seema Sinha , Entertainment Journalist

Published on Mar 29, 2025 | 07:01 PM IST | 13K

Picture Courtesy: IMDb

Bill Murray is opening up about the one project he regrets passing on. The actor and comedian, known for titles like Ghostbusters, Lost in Translation, Zombieland, and more, recently said that he wished he had taken up Clint Eastwood’s offer to star in a war comedy in the mid-1980s. Although he did not reveal the exact project, it appears he was referring to Heartbreak Ridge. Here’s how the movie fared at the box office.

Made on a USD 15 million budget, the film hit theaters on December 5, 1986, and earned USD 8.1 million in its opening weekend. The Eastwood, Everett McGill, Marsha Mason, and Mario Van Peebles starrer capped its worldwide revenue at USD 42.7 million. Adjusted for inflation, that figure becomes an impressive USD 124.5 million.

“A long time ago, I was watching the Clint Eastwood movies of the day, like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot or whatever movies he was making then, and I thought: ‘His sidekick gets killed, and he avenges, but the sidekick gets a great part, a great death scene,’” Murray shared on The Howard Stern Show.

The actor recalled immediately calling Eastwood and being asked if he would be interested in another service comedy—"another" because Murray had done Stripes in 1981. According to Murray, Eastwood had a “great idea” for an ambitious Navy endeavor. The actor, however, passed on the role, fearing he would become like Abbott and Costello.

“But one of the few regrets I have is that I didn’t do it. Because it was a big-scale thing, and I would have gotten a great—I don’t know if I’d have gotten a great death scene, it was more of a comedy, that one—but it was great,” he expressed. “He had access to World War II boats, and he could have made a flotilla and stuff, and there was some cool stuff in it.”

Murray added that when he saw Eastwood next, he apologized for turning him down and made it known that he regretted not being part of the production. According to him, Eastwood is well over the rejection. Murray praised the actor-director as a “very resilient” entity.

Murray and Naomi Watts star in The Friend, now playing in theaters. Without revealing much, the film, based on the novel of the same name by Sigrid Nunez, follows the relationship between Watts’ Iris and Apollo, a dog, as they are forced together by circumstances beyond their control.