Milo Ventimiglia

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

  1. Elijah Wood, Radio Flyer, 1990.   Columbia won what was then the hottest script in town – and cowardly   chickened out of its subject, cast and debuting writer-director.  And called in Richard Donner – “hey, The Goonies was a great kids’ movie!” However, the main subject here was (or had been) child, abuse. When David Mickey Evans was still in charge of his own semi-autobio drama, Rosanna Arquette’s kids – well, Lorraine Bracco’s now – were James Badge Dale and Joseph Mazzello as his younger brother, abused by their stepfather. Elijah had auditioned for poor Bobby and won Mike…. from a reported 3,000 candidates, including Macauley Culkin (he’d just finished Homer Alone), James Badge Dale and Milo.  Evans  turned his ruined script into a novel, The King of Pacoima (with no cuts) and directed 16 other movies by 2022.
  2. Tom Welling, Smallville, TV, 2001-2011.    The pitch from Tollin/Robbins Productions was a series about the pre-Batman Bruce Wayne. Oh, no you don’t, said the Warner suits, we’re keeping Batman for the movies.   “OK, how about the young Clark Kent?”   Ya got jt!  And it ran twice as many years as Lois & Clark in the 90s… after Ventimilglia, Jensen Ackles and Brandon Routh were swept aside by Welling. (Milo’s test won him Jess Mariano on Gilmore Girls, 2000-2006, leading to Sly Stallone Jr in Rocky Balboa, 2006, and his breakthrough as Peter Petrelli  in Heroes, 2006-2009.). Welling’s fans petitioned for Tom to star in Superman Returns – won by Routh!  So it goes…
  3. Steve Howey, DOA: Dead or Alive, 2006.     He passed – over  issues  with the development (or lack of it) of the role of Wearherby. He switched to another  video game movie, Stay Alive.
  4. Adrien Brody, Predators, 2009.    Ventimiglia, Josh Brolin and Freddy Rodriguez, didn’t match the vision held by  producer Robert Rodgriguez and director Nimród Antal  for Royce,  the soldier-of-fortune leader of a  bunch  of savage hit men warriors hunted by aliens… in   the 1994 script that Rodriguez designed as “a big bad sequel to the 1987 and 1990 originals, not the recent Alien vs. Predator franchise.”  (Freddy and Robert are not kin).
  5. Jai Courtney, A Good Day To Die Hard, 2012.  Justin Timberlake was first chosen for our hero John McClane’s son, Jack, in Live Free or Die Hard, 2006,  aka Hard 4. Jack was axed and kept in the Fox freezer until Hard 5. By the time that was ready six years later, Timberlake was gone and the new candidates for McHero Jr were: Courtney, Ventimiglia,  DJ Cotrona, James Badge Dale, Shiloh Fernandez, Ben Foster, Liam Hemsworth, Steven R McQueen (the grandson), Aaron Paul and Paul Walker.
  6. James Marsden, Sonic the Hedgehog, 2019. For the new movie version of the video game, 15 actors jostled for Tom Wachowski, the Montana cop helping the speedy blue blur alien from another planet in his fight against Jim Carrey’s Dr Robotnik. They were: Ventimiglia, Jack Black, Ansel Elgort, Chris Evans, Bill Hader(also up for voicing Sonic), Ed Helms, Jake Johnson, Michael B. Jordan, Adam Pally (also seen for Sonic, he wound up as Wade, Tom’s deputy), Chris Pratt, Paul Rudd, Jason Segal, Justin Timberlake, Owen Wilson and Marsden, who was ready for “as many as they want to make. it was so much fun to see Jim enjoying himself again.”

 Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls:  6