The Godfather Without Brando?: It Almost Happened

There are some oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing instances of famous movie roles ini­tial­ly intend­ed for oth­ers. Lawrence Kas­dan wrote the script for The Body­guard in the 1970s and intend­ed it as a vehi­cle for Steve McQueen and Diana Ross. How­ev­er, the death of McQueen put paid to that and the project was put on ice until its now-famous ren­der­ing with Cost­ner and Hous­ton. My favourite rumour on the cast­ing front is that even­tu­al Oscar-win­ner Kevin Spacey was not the first choice for Amer­i­can Beau­ty’s Lester Burn­ham. That hon­our appar­ent­ly went to one Chevy Chase. Now, that’s a film I’d pay good mon­ey to see.

You always read about clas­sic movies that almost nev­er were because “some­body else” was going to be cast in place of the icon­ic star, like Ronald Rea­gan instead of Bog­a­rt in “Casablan­ca.”

How I wish it were pos­si­ble to find movies that missed the mark, and yet coul­da been a con­ten­da’ if so-and-so had been cast instead of the actor actu­al­ly cho­sen for the part.