The Truth About Dan Bilzerian's First Movie Role
Say what you want about Dan Bilzerian. Discuss the real reason why he's so rich. Speculate on whether he's actually good at poker. Reminisce the reason he hated the military. However, there's no denying the fact that once you get used to the "half a bear glued to the chin" beard style, the guy is reasonably photogenic, as befits the self-styled "King of Instagram."
With his social media fame, considerable financial resources, and buff looks, it was really just a matter of time before Bilzerian got his mitts in the movie business, and at the time of writing, his IMDb page indeed shows a handful of roles — to be precise, five, not counting characters named "Dan" or "Dan Bilzerian." The first one of these came in 2013, when he played a character called Healy in the Mark Wahlberg war movie, Lone Survivor. Not a bad debut at all, but how did things actually go behind the scenes? Here's the truth about Dan Bilzerian's first movie role.
Dan Bilzerian's massively reduced role led to a lawsuit
As Aaron Couch of Hollywood Reporter tells us, Dan Bilzerian was not a happy camper when he saw Lone Survivor. In fact, he was so unhappy about the end result that he sued the producers.
Bilzerian's malcontent was not necessarily about the movie's quality, per se. He was more irked about Lone Survivor's Dan Bilzerian content, which was roughly one-eighth of what he said had been agreed upon. According to the poker player, the problem was that he had given the production a loan of $1 million, and in return, they promised him a a minimum of eight minutes in the movie, and 80 words' worth of dialogue. As such, he was less than delighted when the finished product gave him just one line and under a minute of screentime.
According to Chris Ayres of GQ, however, the story has a happy ending, especially if you happen to be Dan Bilzerian. The "King of Instagram" got tons of publicity, and ended up dropping the lawsuit because he claimed that the film was so successful he'd actually earned $1.5 million from it.