- Ryan Reynolds, The Green Lantern, 2010. Well, two out of three ain’t bad. He won Terminator Salvation and the new Chekov in the new Star Trek. Yelchin had debuted in Be Still My Heart, 2000… at age 11.
- Andrew Garfield, The Amazing Spider-Man, 2010.
- Joaquin Phoenix, The Master, 2011. Yelchin and Jeremy Renner were “processed” to be Freddy Quell, the WWII Navy veteran falling under the spell (there is no other word for it) of the titular religious cult leader Philip Seymour Hoffman. Probably, Phoenix’s greatest role. (Until the next one!).
- Boyd Holbrook, Very Good Girls, 2012. Yelchin’s diary was busier than his agent thought. Holbrook took over as the perfect guy chosen by Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen to take their virginities.
- Miles Teller, Fantastic Four, 2014. During time out from Star Trek’s Chekov, Yelchin tested for the reboot’s Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic. So did Kit Harington, Richard Madden and Jack O’Connell.They were lucky to lose another reboot failure. Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy called “a 100-minute trailer for a movie that never happens.”
- Joaquin Phoenix, Inherent Vice, 2014. To miss one great Paul Thomas Anderson film is bad enough… but two… !!!
- Travis Fimmel, Warcraft : The Beginning, 2015. Based on the series of immensely successful medieval video games – orcs v humans. Johnny Depp was going to star for Sam Raimi in 2012 but Duncan Jones finally directed the Aussie TV Tarzan. Jones’ father – after checking out Dano, Anson Mountanc Anton Yelchin plus various gryphons, dragons, zombies and werewolves.
- Nicholas Hoult, Newness, 2016. The pitch? Two millennials navigate a social media-driven hookup culture… (Yawn). The Star Trek star had talked about making the film with Drake Doremus, director of the largely improvised 2010 Like Crazy, , but died in a tragic acuident. Doremus dedicated his film to him in the credits
- Jack Kilmer, The Pretenders, 2016. Good title, Oh, lots of pretence here… Actor–director James Franco plays a famous film-maker (he wishes) involved in a barely credible threeway romance – inspired, I suppose, is the word – by Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 A band apart. Yelchin was in talks about joining the exercise when he died.
- Harry Treadaway, Mr Mercedes, TV, 2017-2019. Before his tragic death, run over by his own car, in 2016, Yelchin had committed to being Brady Hartsfield in the adaptation of Stephen King’s Bill Hodges Trilogy, the 274th of his staggering 313 screen credits since Carrie in 1976. Brendan Gleeson was Hodges. It was always written for him, said the author. (King Kameo: man with knife through his neck).
- Ezra Miller, Justice League, 2017. For ten years, Warner exercised extreme cowardice, until Marvel showed them how to make superhero summits with Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. In October 2007, Mad Max’s dad, George Miller, had found his Bat/Supermans, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aqua Man, Green Lantern, even the Martian Manhunter J’onn J’onzz, after auditioning about 40 youngsters in synch for a franchise… Yelchin had won Wally West/The Flash in George Miller’s Justice League ouplans. But Warner Bros chickened out and four months later, everything was “tabled.” Dumped! (And JJ Abrams immediately nabbed Yelchin for Chekov in the new Star Trek movies). By 2010, Miller had gone and who could blame him. Besides, he wanted to go to the Max again. Yelchin died in 2016 from blunt traumatic asphyxia – when run down by his own car and pinned against a brick pillar in his own driveway. He was 27.
Birth year: 1989Death year: 2016Other name: Casting Calls: 11