Channing Tatum

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

 

  1. Lucas Black, The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift, 2005.
    It was, he told talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel, his worst audition. “I wanted to go to Tokyo very badly. I wanted to drift Tokyo… I stopped in the middle of the audition. I was like… “I think we’re done, right? This is terrible!”  I blocked it out, mainly so I don’t remember the specifics. I think it was a combination of me being just bad, not remembering the lines, totally freaking out… probably sweating a lot.” What he luckily lost was more like director Justin Tin’s sequel to Better Luck Tomorow than any F&F chapter. The suits wanted to go younger – so they dumped, Paul Walker! But they had to run back to old Vin Diesel to add a cameo to make it work. His price? The Riddick rights.

  2. Chris Evans, Push, 2008.    Tatum was part of the original set-up – before director Paul McGuigan caught Evans in another sf movie, Sunshine, 2006. A fistful of years later, Tatum, and Evans were rivals fort Captain America.  And again Evans won. 
  3. Taylor Kitsch, X-Men Origins: Wolverine,2008.  Gambit finally showed up in the fourthchapter. Back in 2005, director Bryan Singer saw Tatum and Josh Holloway but chose Reeves as Gambit/Remy LerBeau in what he’d planned as the third film – helmed in 2005 by Brett Ratner when Singer left to ruin Superman Returns. Something he regretted before, during and after watching Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand, 2005.  Josh Holloway felt the role was too close to his current gig, Lost, TV, 2004-2010. (Oh, really!). Tatum   was later due to inherit the Cajun mutant.
  4. Xavier Samuel, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, 2009.     Pretty Boy Floyd from Public Enemies was among the Riley possibles. So was Tom Felton, from the Harry Potter films.
  5. Chris Hemsworth, Thor, 2010.       After Brad Pitt passed, 007’s Daniel Craig was first choice for the disabled medical student Dr. Donald Blake with the mighty Thor as his alter ego. Also in contention were the future Loki, RoboCop, Tarzan and Magic Mike: Tom Hiddleston, Kinnaman, Alexander Skarsgård, “Chan.” Plus baby brother Liam Hemsworth, Charlie Hunnam, Paul Levesque, Tyler Mane.
  6. Robert Pattinson,  Water For Elephants, 2010.       Anthony Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner,  Andrew Garfield, Emile Hirsch also auditioned for Jacob Jankowski, the teen who runs away to join a circus.  Because Reese Witherspoon is there. Hmm, takes all sorts. 

  7. Chris Evans, Captain America: The First Avenger, 2010.
    Chan was in the final three up for Steve Rogers, the super-serumed alter-ego of America’s symbol of liberty (from WWII to Obama), part of Marvel’s superhero armada in the  first screen version of the WWII propaganda comicbook hero  – Defender of the Defenceless – since Republic’s 1944 serial (with Dick Purcell), two 1979  tele-quickies (Rep Brown) and the 1989 movie (Matt Salinger, son of the monumental JD, no less). A 1981 Universal plan for Jeff Bridges     never flew. Nor did Cannon’s 1984 take which UK director Michael Winner never got around to casting (well, not out loud).  Also missing the 2010 nine-picture deal for Cap Am sequels, Avengers movies and cross-overs were… Jensen Ackles, Wilson Bethel, Michael Cassidy, Dane Cook, Chace Crawford, Garrett Hedlund, Kellan Lutz, Ryan Phillippe, Scott Porter, Alexander Skarsgård, Will Smith, Sebastian Stan,  Mike Vogel, Sam Worthington.  Plus two of the Jonas brothers  band (Joe and Kevin), three of the TV-Marvelverse: Wilson Bethel (Daredevil), Chad Michael Murray (Agent Carter), Derek Theler (New Warriors).  And John Krasinski. “This is stupid,” he yelled during his costumed test, “I’m not Captain America!” And he wasn’t.  But he was Amazon’s TV’s surprise Jack Ryan  in 2018.

  8. Ryan Reynolds, Safe House,2011.      All the other new guys – Tatum, Zac Efron ,Jake Gyllenhaal, Garret Hedlund, Taylor Kitsch, Shia LaBeouf, James McAvoy, Chris Pine, Sam Worthington – also aimedto be the freshman CIA baby-sitter having to rescue Denzel Washington from an attacked safe house in theHollywood debut of Swedish director Daniel Espinosa.
  9. Chris Pine, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, 2012.        Tom Clancy’s CIAnalyst hero, Jack Ryan, has been around since The Hunt For Red October,  1989 – played, in turn,  by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben  Affleck. Time, then, for a third reboot…  Also ruled out were George Clooney  (too old – hey! Ford had been 50) and  Tatum  – far too busy with five films immediately following his Pretty Boy Floyd in Public Enemies, 2009.  The ex-construction worker, mortgage broker, salesman and model from Alabama said: “I got crazy lucky. Like… I won the lottery or something.”
  10. Casey Affleck, Out of the Furnace, 2012.    Tatum, Garret Hedlund, Max Irons, and Taylor Kitsch were among early choice forthe brother of ex-con ChristianBale.  Tatum had a good enough year. He was Mr. Breakthrough of 2012 with 21 Jump Street and his own production of Magic Mike.

  11. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Don Jon, 2012.     Turning director of his own cracking scenario, JLG had his hands full and thought of asking his pal Tatum to be Jon, porn-obsessed until meeting the love of his life. Then again why should Chan have all he fun! Tatum still appeared (like Meagan Goode, Cuba Gooding Jr, Anne Hathaway) in bits of the rom-com movies poor Jon has to take his girl to. The result, said Examiner.com critic Chris Sawins was “obnoxiously funny, effortlessly identifiable, unusually tender, and obscenely amusing.” Who could ask for more?
  12. Tom Hardy, Mad Max: Fury Road, 2012.     Every tough guy from Mel Gibson himself in 2003 (before discovering The Passion of Christ, anti-Semitism and LA ostracism) to Chan, the James Cameron regular Michael Biehn, actor-producer Liam Fountain (the titular Mad Max Renegade in his 2011 short), Heath Ledger and Jeremy Renner were also in the loop before creator George Miller won his budget, Hardy wore Mel’s old jacket and Charlize Theron stole the wheelie Western as a Mad Maxine. No way to treat Max Rockatansky (or his fans) after a 30-year hiatus, George!
  13. Henry Cavill, The Man From UNCLE, 2013.   Superman Cavill goes solo. Napoleon Solo… After securing the 60s’ TV series rights in 1993, producer John Davis went through 20 years, 14 scripts, four directors (letting slip Soderbergh – which meant Tatum as Solo) and Tarantino!), plus 19 Napoleon Solos. From George Clooney in 2010 to Tom Cruise three years later. By way of the early-21st century suspects: Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joel Edgerton, Michael Fassbender, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ryan Gosling, Jon Hamm, Joel Kinnaman, Ewan McGregor, Robert Pattinson, Chris Pine, Ryan Reynolds, Alexander Skarsgård (he switched to Tarzan Even Russell Crowe, surely a better bet at 50 for old Waverly, the UNCLE boss. Poor Davis never got it right!
  14. Anton Yelchin, Dying of the Light, 2014. Taxi Driver scenarist Paul Schrader wrote his script on spec. Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn Refn planned it for Harrison Ford and Tatum. Except Ford was worried by the bleak ending.   Refn stayed on as exec producer to allow Schrader make his onw movie – “taken away from me, re-edited, scored and mixed without my input.”
  15. Garrett Hedlund, Pan, 2015.     Long before the UK director Joe Wright arrived, Tatum was front runner for the revisionist Captain Hook, ie Peter’s pal!  
  16. Bill Skarsgård, It, 2016.   There was talk over seven years about re-hashing the mini-series of 1990 – when Stellan Skarsgård’s son/Alexander Tarzan Skarsgård’s brother was born. Among his rivals for Pennywise, Stephen King’s shape-shifting horror clown, were the too obvious Jim Carrey, Tim Curry (no, no, he’d already done It on TV), Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, Jackie Earle Haley. Plus Tatum, Richard Armitage, Kirk Acevedo (of Oz), Paul Giamatti, Tom Hiddleston, Doug Jones, Ben Mendelsohn (argued over money), Will Poulter (bad scheduling), Hugo Weaving… even Tilda Swinton. Only Bill Skarsgård could produce both a child-like and creepy-like Pennywise. “It’s beyond even a sociopath, because he’s not even human. He’s not even a clown… [that’s] a manifestation of the children’s imaginations, so there’s something child-like about that.” Hence, It: Chapter Two, 2019.
  17. Spencer Rocco LoFranco, The Life and Death of John Gotti, 2016.  According to New York Post, Dominic Cooper (the UK Mama Miastar) was all set to play John Gotti Jr – after Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr, James Franco, Shia LaBoeuf, Jeremy Renner and Channing Tatum withdrew from what was then Gotti: In The Shadow Of My Father. Canada’s LoFranco was perfect for Travolta… unknown, far from A Lists or stealing movies. While Juniors, writers, directors and years sped by, John Travolta remained literally The Teflon Don as Gotti Sr, was known when the untouchable head of New York’s Gambino Mafia family.  When the film finally opened in June, 2018, Gotti was rapidly sleeping with the fishes, roasted by critics and was hit – as in mob  hit – by the public, scoring a mere $1.6m opening weekend. Not the first but the biggest disaster of Travolta’s career
  18. Charlie Hunnam,Triple Frontier, 2019.  The duo fixing up a dirty half-dozen of fellow needy ex-Special Forces guys to rip off your usual South American drug kingpin to beef up their pensions went from Tom Hardy-Channing Tatum to Johnny Depp-Tom Hanks to Ben and Casey Affleck to Denzel Washington-Sean Penn to Leonardo DiCaprio-Anybody to, finally, Ben Affleck-Oscar Isaac. (Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith and Mark Wahlberg also featured in the mixes – minus any cited pardner). Bywhich time it had run out of the steam it must have once had as Kathryn Bigelow was once going to direct. JCChandor was no substitute.

 

 

 

 

 

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 Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls:  17