{"id":105776,"date":"2025-08-29T16:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T16:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/105776\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T16:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T16:24:07","slug":"the-biggest-casting-what-ifs-of-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/105776\/","title":{"rendered":"The Biggest Casting What-Ifs of the 21st Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leo as Patrick Bateman? Denzel Washington as Michael Clayton? Step through the sliding doors and take a gander at what the new millennium could\u2019ve looked like.<\/p>\n

Recastings in Hollywood are a dime a dozen. Nearly every film produced at one point had several actors considered to play key roles, even if, in retrospect, it\u2019s impossible to imagine the parts going to anyone else. But when you hear that some of the most iconic roles in Hollywood history almost went another way, they take on a sort of mystique. Truman Capote once intended for Marilyn Monroe to be Holly Golightly, and Eric Stoltz had filmed scenes as Marty McFly; tons of fateful decisions have been made that nearly denied us our on-screen heroes as we came to know them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As we continue our celebration of the best movie performances of the 21st century<\/a>, let\u2019s look back at the ones that almost never happened. These serve as the millennium\u2019s biggest what-ifs, or\u2014to borrow a bit of Bill Simmons parlance\u2014sliding doors moments, if you will. What if Jake Gyllenhaal had replaced Tobey Maguire for Spider-Man 2? Or Denzel Washington had agreed to star in Michael Clayton? Or Pen\u00e9lope Cruz had taken on Melancholia? Would the movies live up to the versions we know and love today or take them in an entirely different direction? Is there a universe where Jon Hamm is now halfway to an EGOT thanks to his role in Gone Girl? Let\u2019s attempt to answer the biggest what-ifs of the past 25 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What if \u2026 Leonardo DiCaprio had explained Huey Lewis songs?<\/p>\n

The sliding doors moment: There were a couple of efforts to bring Bret Easton Ellis\u2019s 1991 novel, American Psycho, to the screen. (The most notable of which involved David Cronenberg and Brad Pitt<\/a>. Now there\u2019s a what-if!) The project didn\u2019t enter serious development, though, until director Mary Harron signed on in 1996. Lionsgate was dead set on Leonardo DiCaprio, whose megawatt star power was exploding after Titanic, for the role of Patrick Bateman\u2014so much so that, at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival<\/a>, the studio blindsided Harron with an announcement that he would be playing the part. Harron has said that she\u2019d already been talking about the role with Christian Bale<\/a>, who, despite some memorable parts throughout the \u201990s, had not quite broken through yet. She felt that DiCaprio was so wrong for the part\u2014\u201cThere\u2019s something very boyish about him,\u201d she would later say<\/a>\u2014that she flat out refused to meet with him. Lionsgate responded by dropping her from the project and replacing her with Oliver Stone \u2026 only for DiCaprio to drop out of the film himself when he was offered the lead role in Danny Boyle\u2019s The Beach. Stone\u2019s departure followed, Harron was reinstated, and soon enough, Bale was making the world\u2019s first \u201cget ready with me\u201d video<\/a> in Patrick Bateman\u2019s bathroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Would it have worked? A 2000 report in The Guardian<\/a> said that Stone was going to approach the film as more of a straightforward psychological thriller rather than blending in the novel\u2019s social satire, which Harron eventually implemented in the movie. In that case, I\u2019m sure that Leo would have done a fine job, and it would\u2019ve been a pretty run-of-the-mill crime film with no greater legacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If DiCaprio had starred in Harron\u2019s version of the film, I\u2019m not sure that it would\u2019ve worked. \u201cLeonardo DiCaprio in a comedic crime thriller\u201d may seem like a layup today, but it took him awhile to grow into the likes of\u00a0 Jordan Belfort and Rick Dalton. Even back then, his morally gray characters like Catch Me If You Can\u2019s Frank Abagnale Jr. played on that boyish charm Harron was concerned about\u2014Patrick Bateman needed to have a real sinister menace to him, a darkness behind the eyes that DiCaprio wasn\u2019t capable of tapping into at the time. Those baby blues and that floppy golden hair simply weren\u2019t giving sociopathic finance bro! Lionsgate be damned, Bale was the right choice all along.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What would be different today? DiCaprio flounders in the role and his stock plummets. He books a comeback role in the late 2000s in some shitty Jason Reitman\u2013type dramedy that gets him an Oscar nomination. Bale never gets jacked for American Psycho and therefore never discovers the power of transforming his body for a role, so he\u2019s \u2026 just kind of a normal dude. Somehow, Jared Leto lands Batman Begins. Everybody loses!\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Best Movie Performances of the Century <\/p>\n

The Best Movie Performances of the Century <\/p>\n

What if \u2026 Tobey Maguire had transformed into Jake Gyllenhaal?<\/p>\n

The sliding doors moment: You might ask how studio execs could even consider recasting the face of an astronomically gigantic superhero franchise. Once upon a time (in the heady days of 2002), wearing tights and beating up bad guys wasn\u2019t as secure of a gig as it is now. Spider-Man was a massive success upon its arrival in spring 2002, both financially and critically, and Tobey Maguire\u2019s endearingly meek portrayal of New York City\u2019s web slinger was a huge part of that. Plus, he had inked a three-picture deal<\/a> when he signed onto the project back in 2000. A sequel was a no-brainer. There was one problem, though: While playing a jockey for Seabiscuit in 2002, Maguire suffered a herniated disc in his back. Reporting from the time indicates that Maguire wasn\u2019t totally up-front about the severity of the injury, and director Sam Raimi found out about it elsewhere. \u201cWhen I heard that Tobey could be paralyzed from a stunt on set, I realized I couldn\u2019t possibly have him in the picture,\u201d Raimi said in 2004<\/a>. Plus, rumors swirled that there was already tension between Maguire and Raimi after the actor had declined to participate in a computer scan for special effects during preproduction. Maguire has also acknowledged that his general attitude heading into Spider-Man 2 was \u201cinappropriate\u201d\u2014speculation that the actor is difficult to work with on set (and in poker games<\/a>) followed him in the tabloids<\/a> for the rest of his career, so it\u2019s not hard to believe that his reputation played a factor in his recasting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Enter the man behind cinema\u2019s most unsettling heartthrobs: Jake Gyllenhaal. Raimi said that he offered the role of Peter Parker to the actor, who was coming off 2001\u2019s Donnie Darko, because of how serious he believed Maguire\u2019s back injury to be. \u201cI think [Maguire] is the right Spider-Man. But if I can\u2019t have Tobey, you\u2019re the man for me,\u201d he recalled telling Gyllenhaal. Those involved in the decision also believed that Maguire and Gyllenhaal looked basically identical and that no one would notice the switch: \u201cA year from now? The public wouldn\u2019t know the difference,\u201d an anonymous source close to Maguire (perhaps predicting the meme of the Spider-Men pointing at each other?) told the Los Angeles Times<\/a>. Columbia officially dropped Maguire from the sequel and was prepared to move forward with Gyllenhaal. Then came another hitch in the plan: Maguire was dating Jennifer Meyer, daughter of Universal Studios COO Ronald Meyer, at the time. She informed her father of the recasting, and, not wanting Maguire\u2019s star power to diminish before his studio put out Seabiscuit, he called in some favors (nay, demands?) with Columbia. After some health exams, fitness tests, and provisions worked into his contract, Maguire was suiting up as Spidey yet again. Who knew that Seabiscuit held so much influence?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Would it have worked? As in, would audiences have believed that Maguire and Gyllenhaal were the same person? I\u2019m going to take a shot in the dark and say no. (Although they did eventually play brothers<\/a>!) But would Gyllenhaal have been able to lead the film in his own right, if you ignore all of the context of the recasting and the lack of continuity from the first film? Eh \u2026 I\u2019m still going with no. Gyllenhaal is a much more versatile and impressive actor than Maguire, as evidenced by the fact that he\u2019s had a much more versatile and impressive career. But Maguire was pitch-perfect for the nerdy, disarming portrait of Peter Parker that Raimi had in mind, and that version of the hero doesn\u2019t really suit Gyllenhaal\u2019s strengths anyway. Even when he\u2019s playing \u201cgood\u201d guys, like in Brokeback Mountain or Zodiac, he tends to imbue them with a tendency for outbursts or wild-eyed obsession\u2014not exactly the quietly romantic tone that Maguire was going for with Spidey. It\u2019s no surprise that when Gyllenhaal did eventually make it on-screen in the Spider-Man universe, it was in a villainous role<\/a>. Now, if we were talking about Spider-Man 3, I would\u2019ve loved to see Jake G shoot some finger guns<\/a> and sweep Bryce Dallas Howard off her feet in a jazz club<\/a>. Alas, I think that Spider-Man 2 ultimately worked out the way it was meant to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What would be different today? Spider-Man 2 is still a box office success, but the legacy of the series as a whole is tarnished, and a third installment is never made. Superhero movies are deemed unsustainable, and studios instead turn to auteur-driven films aimed at adults to win back audiences. The 2000s serve as another Golden Age of Hollywood, at the cost of emo Peter Parker<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What if \u2026 Denzel Washington was the guy you buy, not the guy you kill?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sliding doors moment: There isn\u2019t a huge story here, but it does involve swapping out one titan for another. In 2012, GQ<\/a> asked Denzel Washington whether there are any roles he regrets turning down. He named two films: Se7en and Michael Clayton. \u201cIt was the best material I had read in a long time,\u201d he said of the latter. His ambivalence stemmed from the prospect of working with first-time director Tony Gilroy (who went on to create Andor)\u2014\u201cI was wrong,\u201d Washington later admitted to GQ\u2014so he declined, and George Clooney wound up portraying the fixer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Would it have worked? Come on, Denzel would\u2019ve absolutely crushed this. Don\u2019t tell my Ringer colleagues this, but \u2026 I\u2019m not the biggest Michael Clayton head. I kind of even find it slightly boring. I\u2019m sorry! But if Washington\u2014perhaps the single most magnetic screen presence of all time?\u2014had been in there chopping it up with Karen Crowder and plotting U-North\u2019s downfall, I\u2019d be rewatching it regularly. Just imagine him delivering the \u201cDo I look like I\u2019m here to negotiate?\u201d line and tell me it wouldn\u2019t rock extremely hard. Clooney obviously succeeded in the role, and he ended up on our list of the best performances of the 21st century for a reason, but I think that Washington would have killed with this material.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What would be different today? Washington wins his third Oscar for Michael Clayton and is immediately canonized as one of the all-time greats. Clooney is still a couple of nominations away from his eventual consolation Oscar after his loss for Jay Kelly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What if \u2026 Heath Ledger happened upon $2 million?<\/p>\n

The sliding doors moment: Josh Brolin\u2019s rugged exterior seems so suited to the on-the-run Texan Llewelyn Moss in 2007\u2019s No Country for Old Men that it\u2019s hard to picture anyone else taking on the role. But the Coen brothers\u2019 first choice was Heath Ledger, himself coming off a Western take in Brokeback Mountain. Brolin later recalled<\/a> that the eventual Joker opted out of the picture because he simply needed a break from acting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Would it have worked? Hell yes! Brolin is fantastic in No Country, and it would be a bummer to lose that performance. But Ledger was on an absolute heater from 2005 to 2008\u2014Llewelyn Moss surely would\u2019ve been another scene-stealing feather in his cap. It\u2019s tough to think about any of the great Ledger performances we\u2019ve missed out on since his death in 2008, but he and the Coens would have been a particularly excellent match.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What would be different today? Ledger\u2019s career from Brokeback Mountain to No Country for Old Men to The Dark Knight is considered one of the most impressive runs any actor\u2019s ever had.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What if \u2026 Pen\u00e9lope Cruz had witnessed a planet colliding with Earth?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sliding doors moment: Most of the entries on this list just involved some fateful recasting for a competitive role, but Melancholia\u2019s Justine was conceived for Pen\u00e9lope Cruz<\/a>, and the ideas for the film came from letters that director Lars von Trier exchanged with her. If she was so integral to the character, then how the heck did she not end up in the movie? Well, a little motion picture called Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides came along. Who could say no? Cruz quite literally jumped ship, and von Trier had to tag in a second-string Justine in Kirsten Dunst.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Would it have worked? Considering how vital Cruz was to the inception of the film and the character of Justine in particular, it seems pretty likely that she would have excelled in the role. She\u2019s had such a varied career, from her work in Pedro Almod\u00f3var\u2019s films to her turns in American blockbusters, and she consistently provides an electric screen presence, so I\u2019m sure that she would\u2019ve risen to the occasion. But it really makes it all the more impressive that Dunst so ably stepped into a performance entirely intended for someone else and turned in one of the best screen roles of the century.<\/p>\n

What would be different today? Cruz receives widespread acclaim for Melancholia and Dunst is still just as acclaimed an actress, but Marie Antoinette is (rightfully?) her most celebrated role.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What if \u2026 Shiv Roy were Swedish?<\/p>\n

The sliding doors moment: In 2010, Lisbeth Salander was the single hottest role in Hollywood. Stieg Larsson\u2019s Millennium book series was a bona fide phenomenon: It sold 100 million copies and crossed over from Larsson\u2019s native Sweden into the United States. The Swedish adaptations of the three novels Larsson penned before his death in 2004, starring Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace, found moderate success in the U.S., but the one-inch barrier<\/a> had audiences itching for a Hollywood version of their favorite Nordic thriller.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Serial killer whisperer David Fincher signed on to direct the American remake, and although there was a little competition for the role of journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Entertainment Weekly<\/a> reported that Brad Pitt was in the mix), Daniel Craig was cast<\/a> pretty quickly. The pierced punk hacker Lisbeth was tougher\u2014there was an extensive casting search that included just about every 20-something white woman in Hollywood. Seriously, check out the \u201cCasting\u201d section on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo\u2019s Wikipedia page, and you\u2019ll see about 5,000 blue names. I\u2019m not sure how seriously they were all considered, but Kristen Stewart, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, and Carey Mulligan were all names floated in the trades, until the search reportedly came down to a final four<\/a>: Rooney Mara (whom Fincher had just worked with on the yet-to-be-released Social Network), L\u00e9a Seydoux (coming off Inglourious Basterds and Ridley Scott\u2019s Robin Hood), Sarah Snook, and Sophie Lowe (Snook and Lowe were both steadily working Australian actors who hadn\u2019t broken through in the U.S. yet). We know how that competition ended: Mara dyed her hair black, she pierced her nipple<\/a>, and the rest is history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Would it have worked? Unless you\u2019re Australian, the name in the final four that surprised you the most is probably Sarah Snook. Yep, before she was rocking pantsuits and quiet luxury, Shiv Roy herself almost sported an eyebrow piercing and a \u201cFuck You, You Fucking Fuck\u201d<\/a> T-shirt. (Actually, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if that were a Shiv Roy line.) Seydoux seems like a natural choice\u2014she has a hard mystique to her that eventually lent itself to experimental fare like The Beast and would have definitely suited Lisbeth\u2014and Lowe never quite crossed over, so it\u2019s hard to know what her take would have been. But Snook is interesting\u2014many of us weren\u2019t familiar with her until her breakout on Succession seven years after Dragon Tattoo\u2019s release, so I don\u2019t totally know what her vibe would\u2019ve been at the time. She brought a coldness to Shiv that was apt for a cutthroat business environment, but Lisbeth\u2019s icy demeanor is of a slightly different variety, as she exists on the fringes of society and faces horrific abuse. While I think that Snook could\u2019ve made the adjustment for it to work, I don\u2019t know that she would have fully embodied the character the way Mara did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What would be different today? Snook\u2019s eyebrow piercing never closes up, so it gets written into Succession. Mara\u2019s acting career stalls, and she instead takes an active role with her uncle\u2019s football team<\/a>, eventually convincing Giants executives to re-sign Saquon Barkley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What if \u2026 Reese Witherspoon had Gone Girl\u2019d Jon Hamm?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sliding doors moment: Upon its publication in 2012, Gone Girl was heralded as a pulpy bestseller ripe for a movie adaptation. Reese Witherspoon, in the precursor to her Reese\u2019s Book Club days, optioned the book with her production company and 20th Century Fox. Since she wasn\u2019t yet known as a producer, presumably she intended to star in it as well (reporting from the time indicates that playing the role of Amy Dunne motivated her to obtain the rights to the novel in the first place). Director David Fincher (turns out that Fincher plus a buzzy novel equals a sliding doors moment!) had other ideas: \u201cHe and I sat down and talked about it and what he wanted the character to be like,\u201d Witherspoon told The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> in 2014. \u201cHe was very candid. He\u2019s like, \u2018It\u2019s just not you.\u2019\u201d She said that she understood the decision, and she opted to stay on as a producer while the role ultimately went to Rosamund Pike.<\/p>\n

As for Nick Dunne, Jon Hamm has claimed in recent years<\/a> that the part was initially supposed to go to him, but he had to drop out because of his commitment to Mad Men. In fact, Page Six<\/a> reported in 2015 that there was some friction between Hamm and Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner because the latter wouldn\u2019t allow his Don Draper out of his contract to take the Gone Girl job. In the end, Ben Affleck got to be the one to flash a grin next to his wife\u2019s missing poster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Would it have worked? I think that Gone Girl\u2019s leads are impeccably cast. I wouldn\u2019t trade Affleck and Pike as Nick and Amy Dunne for anything. The film served as Pike\u2019s breakthrough, and I believe it\u2019s the single best performance of Affleck\u2019s career. That said, if there were an alternate cut floating around out there featuring Hamm and Witherspoon as the leads, I\u2019d be wildly curious to see it.<\/p>\n

As a Mad Men die hard, I would of course love to see Hamm in another big dramatic role (plus, you know, he has all that experience playing a handsome guy who cheats on his wife). He\u2019s from Missouri, where most of the movie is set, so he could presumably throw on a Cardinals hat<\/a> without protest. It\u2019s harder to imagine him believably having an Xbox addiction, and he\u2019s a bit too polished for the level of smarminess that Affleck taps into to play Nick. But overall, I think that he could\u2019ve pulled it off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Witherspoon is more of a wild card. She\u2019s a terrific actress who\u2019s tackled a variety of roles in her career\u2014but \u201cice queen alienated by suburbia\u201d is not one of them. In fact, many of her characters thrive in suburbia, and Amy\u2019s whole persona is supposed to be antithetical to it\u2014it\u2019s easy to see where Fincher was coming from when he decided to go another way. I\u2019m totally open to the idea that she could\u2019ve tackled the role in an unexpected way and succeeded, but it\u2019s hard to picture what it would\u2019ve looked like. I\u2019d love to see it, though!\u00a0<\/p>\n

What would be different today? Pike remains largely unknown, Witherspoon proves everyone wrong and nabs an Oscar nod for Gone Girl, and Hamm crosses over into prestige cinema. Affleck copes with missing out on the role with some distressed smoking<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What if \u2026 Amy Schumer had taken us to Barbieland?<\/p>\n

The sliding doors moment: When it was announced that a live-action Barbie movie was in development, many wondered what the film would even look like. Turns out, there was just as much confusion behind the scenes in regard to tackling the project. The Barbie script went through many rewrites\u2014Jenny Bicks wrote the first draft, then Diablo Cody<\/a> took a crack at it, and then Sony solicited three separate scripts<\/a> to try to get the project on track. In 2016, it was announced that, after Amy Schumer and her sister, Kim Caramele, did a rewrite on one of those three scripts, Schumer would be starring in the title role \u2026 only for her to bow out when faced with creative differences<\/a> on the film\u2019s direction. Bye, Barbie! Sony made a few more attempts to save the project\u2014Anne Hathaway was briefly attached<\/a> as a potential lead\u2014but its option on the IP lapsed in 2018<\/a>, and the film fell to Warner Bros. Margot Robbie was quickly eyed to star, and she eventually brought on Greta Gerwig<\/a> to write and direct.\u00a0Hi, Barbie!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Would it have worked? Does it sound like any of this was working? The Barbie production was a trainwreck (no pun intended) from the jump, and it took years for it to fall into the hands of someone who could put together something competent. The premise for the version Schumer was set to helm\u2014\u201cA story about Barbie getting kicked out of Barbie Land for not being perfect enough, landing her in a real world adventure\u201d\u2014sounds similar enough to what Gerwig ended up making, but there was clearly something deeper that was wrong with the script for it to require that many revisions. No matter what the movie would\u2019ve looked like with Schumer or Hathaway as the tiptoed doll, the fact that it ended up with Robbie and Gerwig\u2014and that they were able to pull something together that was as good as Barbie\u2014proves that what we got was the best version possible.<\/p>\n

What would be different today? Barbie is marred by bad press and is eventually shunned by critics and audiences alike. Oppenheimer opens unrivaled, and the movie event of summer 2023 is Flashemental<\/a> (Flelemental?).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Julianna Ress<\/p>\n

<\/a>Julianna is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She covers music and film and has written about sped-up songs, Willy Wonka, and Charli XCX. She can often be found watching the Criterion Channel or the Sacramento Kings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leo as Patrick Bateman? Denzel Washington as Michael Clayton? Step through the sliding doors and take a gander…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-105776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}