- Johnny Depp, A Nightmare On Elm Street, 1984. Never go to an audition with Johnny..! Haley lost out the Glen role to Depp – who just had ambled along to the audition to keep Haley company. Haley got his revenge, becoming the lead – Freddy Krueger, itself! – in the 2009 re-boot. And the pals finally acted together in Tim Burton’s eighth Depp film, Dark Shadows, 2011.
- Hugh Jackman X-Men quartet, 1999-2013. “Hey, bub, I’m not finished with you yet…” Jackie Earle Haley, Gary Sinise and Kiefer Sutherland were in the 1989 Logan/Wolverine frame. In the early 90s. James Cameron chose, of all people, chubby Bob Hoskins. The fans voted for Jack Nicholson… well, he’d been a decent Wolf in 1994. Fox could not think beyond Keanu Reeves. Crowe felt Logan was too similar to his 1999 Gladiator… and just a toon, anyway. Took him a dozen years to understand comics and succeed Marlon Brando, no less, as Superman’s father, Jor-El, in Man of Steel. Director Bryan Singer searched on through… Singer-songwriter Glenn Danzig, Aaron Eckhart Mel Gibson, Viggo Mortensen (a great idea but not finished with Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings),, Edward Norton (also considered for Scott Summers/Cyclops) and – oh no! – Jean-Claude Van Damme. Finally, Singer chose Dougray Scott – but he was stuck on Mission: Impossible II in Australia which is where Jackman came from (on Crowe’s recommendation) to save the day. And the franchise. At last count, Jackman has been Wolverine in ten movies (Deadpool 2 included) across 19 years.
- Mark Strong, Green Lantern, 2010. No matter how often directors changed – from Tarantino, Zack Snyder, Greg Berlanti (the film’s producer and co-scenarist) to, ultimately, 007’s Martin Campbell – Haley was not available for the villainous Sinestreo (originally based on David Niven). And why not? Because Haley switched – with potential director Snyder – to Watchmen. Allowing a major Hollywood break for the excellent Londoner. His other rivals were the Aussies Geoffrey Rush and Hugo Weaving.
- Ian McShane, Bolden, 2014. Change of Judge Perry as billionaire director Dan Pritzker set out, seven years after starting, to finish his biopic of Buddy Bolden: “the inventor of jazz, ” who died after 24 years in a mental institution. “The idea,” said Pritzer of his odyssey, “is to have Bolden go crazy before I do.”
- 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 JEH, Jim Carrey, Tim Curry (no, no, he’d already done It on TV), Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp. Plus Richard Armitage, Kirk Acevedo (of Oz), Paul Giamatti, Tom Hiddleston, Doug Jones, Ben Mendelsohn (argued over money), Will Poulter (bad scheduling), Channing Tatum, 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.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 4