In 1958, Stanley Kubrick wrote a movie specifically for Kirk Douglas. He “didn’t like it”, and that was the end of that

Stanley Kubrick wrote a screenplay in 1958 for Kirk Douglas, hoping to work with the actor again after *Paths of Glory*. Douglas disliked it, and the project was dropped, leaving the pair with just two films together: *Paths of Glory* and *Spartacus*.

The unmade film, *I Stole $16,000,000*, was based on the memoir of Herbert Emerson Wilson, a First World War veteran who became a safecracker and led a gang that robbed armoured trucks, bank vaults and department stores. Wilson claimed the gang stole $16 million; he was also convicted of murdering an accomplice. Kubrick later said Douglas’s rejection ended the project, but did not explain what he disliked about the screenplay.