Beyond the Sea (film) west conducted arbitration through the scripts that had been written since Barry Levinson developed the film at Warner Bros. in 1987. Lewis Colick, James Toback and Tom Epperson disassociated themselves for credit by the WGA. The Guild justified credit to Lewis Colick, who wrote the first draft of "The Bobby Darin Story" in 1987, and Kevin Spacey. Actor-writer Jeffrey Meek believed he should have deserved credit; he was paid $85,000 of a promised $125,000 to settle his claim to have performed writing services. Spacey said Meek was "not a hired writer" on "Beyond the Sea". "He turned in a draft,
Kevin Spacey a box office bomb, grossing $339,379 with a budget of $6 million, but critics praised Spacey's direction. He also voiced Hopper in the animated film "A Bug's Life" (1998). Spacey won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as a depressed suburban father who re-evaluates his life in 1999's "American Beauty"; the same year, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Spacey won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor and earned another Tony nomination in 1999 for "The Iceman Cometh". Spacey played a physically and emotionally scarred grade school teacher in "Pay