Bill Paxton, the actor best known for roles in Aliens, Apollo 13, Tombstone and Twister, once revealed his disappointment that his 1998 film A Simple Plan never achieved the commercial success he had expected. Speaking to The Guardian in 2002, he admitted he had believed the Sam Raimi-directed thriller would be the role that "connected the dots" for his career, only for it to remain a favourite among dedicated film fans rather than a mainstream hit.

In A Simple Plan, Paxton played Hank, a man whose discovery of $4.4million in a crashed plane in rural Minnesota tears his family apart, alongside co-stars Billy Bob Thornton and Bridget Fonda. The film earned strong reviews and two Oscar nominations, for Thornton's supporting performance and Scott B Smith's adapted screenplay, but struggled at the box office despite years in development and a notoriously difficult shoot hampered by a lack of snow. Nearly three decades on, it remains a cult favourite, standing as one of the more overlooked achievements in Paxton's career before his death in 2017.