The ensemble cast, featuring Beatty in his first screen acting role in 15 years, includes Annette Bening, Matthew Broderick, Lily Collins, and Alden Ehrenreich.
Set in Los Angeles in 1958, the film follows the romantic relationship between actress Marla Mabrey (Collins) and her driver, Frank Forbes (Ehrenreich), which is forbidden by her employer, billionaire Howard Hughes (Beatty).
Within days, Hughes marries Jean Peters to protect him from being committed and fires Noah, hiring Robert Maheu as CEO of his companies.
Having Matt there, Hughes finds the strength to make the phone call anyway, and talks in great detail about current and past events, proving he is lucid and confirming that he has never met Miskin.
On June 20, 2011, Paramount Pictures announced that Warren Beatty would write, direct and star in an untitled film, his first directorial effort since 1998's Bulworth and his first acting role since 2001's Town & Country.
[6] Beatty had been working on a biopic based on Howard Hughes' life for more than 40 years, after seeing him in a hotel lobby in the early 1970s and being fascinated by him.
He met with Andrew Garfield, Alec Baldwin, Annette Bening, Shia LaBeouf, Jack Nicholson, Evan Rachel Wood, and Rooney Mara to co-star.
[16] Justin Timberlake and Alden Ehrenreich were up for the male lead, while Bening, Nicholson, Baldwin, and Owen Wilson were rumored for other roles.
[17] By February 2014, Beatty had cast Alden Ehrenreich, Lily Collins, Matthew Broderick, and Annette Bening among the ensemble.
[12] On February 27, 2014, it was reported that Candice Bergen had joined the supporting cast, portraying Hughes' secretary Nadine Henly.
[19] In April 2014, Brooklyn Decker revealed that Beatty had asked her to improvise on the film, but she did not know if her scenes would make the final cut.
[22] On location filming took place at multiple venues, including S. Grand Avenue, Musso & Frank Grill, and the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.
[43] However, the film made $65,000 from Tuesday night previews at 1,100 theaters,[44] and just $315,000 on its first day (for a per-theater average of $129), and five-day projections were lowered to $2.2 million.
The site's critical consensus reads, "With Rules Don't Apply, Warren Beatty takes an overall affable – but undeniably slight – look at a corner of old Hollywood under Howard Hughes' distinctive shadow.
[51] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "At once an amusingly eccentric take on a billionaire fixated with controlling other people's lives and a romance about a young couple constipated by the conservative religious and social sexual mores of the 1950s, this is a fitfully funny quasi-farce that takes off promisingly, loses its way mid-flight and comes in for a bumpy but safe landing.
"[52] Variety critic Peter Debruge wrote "Warren Beatty certainly took his time in getting this sprawling Spruce Goose of a movie off the ground, as the romance distracts from the Howard Hughes portrait, or vice versa.
"[54] Simon Thompson of IGN gave the film a 6/10 and wrote "It's an odd beast of a movie that sometimes works perfectly and is absolutely enchanting and then at other times just feels leaden and either half-baked or overdone.
The story is great, there is some snappy dialogue and some nicely drawn characters and the cast can't be faulted [...] but unlike directors such as the Coen brothers, Beatty fails to make it pop and, in most cases, criminally underutilizes them – this does both them and the film a disservice.
"[55] David Palmer of The Reel Deal gave the film a rating of 3/10, writing, "As someone who appreciates Warren Beatty's place and contribution to Hollywood history, I hope and pray he appears in at least one more great film, because ending his career on something as poorly assembled and downright boring as Rules Don't Apply would be devastating.