17 Actors Cast in Comic Book Movies Who Didn’t Play the Role

This article comes from Den of Geek UK.

Sometimes, as seems to be the case with every Marvel movie, lots of actors are linked with a role, in what seems to amount to a public audition process. But there have been many instances in the past where someone has been offered the role in a comic book movie, often even signing the deal, yet it never came to pass.

So while this article isn’t going to talk about those who got down to the shortlist, it will focus on the people who got the job as a comic book character, but never got to play them. Here we go…

Marlon Wayans – Robin

Hot off the success of the original Batman movie back in 1989, Warner Bros was planning to move ahead quickly with a sequel. Plans to shoot it at Pinewood in 1990 were shelved though, as instead the studio awaited the return of Tim Burton to the director’s chair, who’d gone off to make Edward Scissorhands.

In the interim though, Warner Bros got busy. Wesley Strick was one of those who took a stab at the screenplay, and his version of what was then Batman 2 had Robin featuring in it. Warner Bros was keen on the idea, even going so far as to cast Marlon Wayans in the role.

Wayans got to the stage of signing up for the film, had a costume fitting, and was  optioned for a sequel. But when Tim Burton came back to the project, he was no fan of the Robin character. Daniel Waters’ subsequent script removed him, and the idea was then to save Robin for Batman 3.

That plan would come to fruition, but by that stage, Tim Burton had moved on, and Joel Schumacher was in as director. His favored choice for the Boy Wonder was Chris O’Donnell, who would take on the role in both Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. Wayans would never get to play the role, and hasn’t been in a major comic book movie since either.

Annette Bening – Catwoman

Still on Batman Returns, someone else who had been cast in the film was Annette Bening. She won the role of Catwoman, off the back of her excellent work in The Grifters, which Tim Burton had seen and was impressed by. She beat quite a field too, with everyone from Cher and Madonna through to Susan Sarandon and Bridget Fonda apparently competing for the role.

Yet Burton’s Batman movies had a problem with their lead female roles. Sean Young was originally set to play Vicki Vale in 1989’s Batman, but a riding injury forced her to pass, and Kim Basinger took on the part. In the case of Catwoman, Bening discovered she was pregnant, and thus had to relinquish the role. Michelle Pfeiffer subsequently met up with Tim Burton, and he gave her the part instead (for more money than Bening would had cost).

Nicolas Cage – Superman

It’s no longer Batman, but we’re still talking Tim Burton here, with one of the most infamous pieces of comic book casting that never ultimately came to light. Had all gone to the original plan, Tim Burton would have rebooted the Superman franchise in the 1990s, with Superman Lives. Nicolas Cage signed up to play the role of Clark Kent/Superman in the movie, pocketing $20 million for his trouble on a pay-or-play contract (which meant that even if the movie didn’t get made, he got his cash). He went in for extensive costume tests, many of which can be found in the excellent The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? documentary.

Burton fought for Cage, arguing that he could being something different to the role, specifically that he could make Clark Kent and Superman feel like two characters that people wouldn’t immediately visually link. Multiple scripts were commissioned for the project, including one by Kevin Smith (which we wrote about in more detail here), and a suitably bonkers, Burton-friendly one by Nightcrawler and Velvet Buzzsaw scribe Dan Gilroy (which you can read about here).

But then Warner Bros got cold feet. With the bill heading north of $100 million for the negative, at one point nearly touching $200 million – and this was the mid-1990s – the studio eventually decided it was too rich a deal. It put Superman Lives on hold, and when Tim Burton departed in April 1998 to go and make Sleepy Hollow instead, the project was all but dead.

Warner Bros spent around $30 million on the film eventually, with little more than those leaked Cage photos to show for it. Cage, a lifelong comic book fan, would eventually take on the role of Ghost Rider instead. We’re coming to him again later a little bit further down this list too…

Armie Hammer – Batman

Of the many abandoned attempts to bring Batman to the big screen, one of them was being shepherded by Mad Max director George Miller. Back in 2007, he even got to the stage of casting for his project, Justice League. This would, as you might assume, have been an assembling of DC superheroes in one movie. And one of those heroes would have been Batman.

Miller got quite far down the road with the project, before it was kiboshed by matters out of his hands. The writers’ strike of 2008, and a change in the Australian tax rebate incentive program, changed the financial dynamics of Justice League. Warner Bros. would instead press ahead with Christopher Nolan on a Batman reboot.

However, Miller had already cast Armie Hammer as his Batman. The same Armie Hammer who came to prominence in The Social Network, and then took on the title role in The Lone Ranger. Hammer has since admitted that the version of Justice League that Miller was planning wouldn’t have had the violent edge of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. He’s also distanced himself from taking on the role of Batman in any future movie project.

Adam Brody – The Flash and Megan Gale – Wonder Woman

Talking of Miller’s Justice League movie, he’d already cast a couple of other people in the roles of comic book heroes. Specifically, Adam Brody was signed up to play the Flash, and Megan Gale was set to be Wonder Woman. Those two pieces of casting went south when the project was put into turnaround.

We wrote in much more detail about this epic Justice League movie you never got to see right here.

John Malkovich – The Vulture

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 would have been a hugely expensive movie. Sony got close to giving him the go-ahead to make the film in 2009, and it got to the stage where casting conversations were taking place.

So much so in fact that in January 2010, word leaked out that John Malkovich had been cast as The Vulture in Spider-Man 4. The actor himself confirmed the role on Italian television, following rumors that had popped up a few weeks before. Furthermore, Dylan Baker – who had sat patiently through two Raimi movies as Dr. Curt Connors – would have possibly got his moment as The Lizard in Spider-Man 4.

But the seeds to this one falling apart had been long sown. Raimi clashed with Sony on Spider-Man 3, resulting in a film that neither party was particularly happy with. And as the budget ballooned for what would have been Spider-Man 4, Sony blinked. It called the film off, Raimi departed, and the studio ordered a full reboot, leading to 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man.

With that decision went two comic book movie villain performances we’ll now never see: Baker’s Lizard, and Malkovich’s Vulture.

Dougray Scott – Wolverine

Hugh Jackman is part of a small string of actors who have played the same role in nine different movies. But that he landed the role at all had an element of fate to it.

Jackman wasn’t the first choice for the role of Wolverine, and in fact another actor got offered the role first. That man? Dougray Scott, who was in the midst of work on Mission: Impossible 2. Mission: Impossible 2 was already behind schedule (the film had already been delayed due to substantive overruns on Tom Cruise’s previous project, Eyes Wide Shut). As such, Scott had to complete his villanous duties on Mission: Impossible, and director Bryan Singer would instead take a chance on a then-relatively unknown Hugh Jackman for his Wolverine. Had M:I 2 been on time? Things most likely would have been very different…

Anthony Hopkins – Jor-El

By the mid-2000s it was Bryan Singer, off the back of his success with the opening pair of X-Men movies, that got the nod to reboot Superman, with Superman Returns. However, before Singer was attached, the project for a time was in the hands of Brett Ratner and JJ Abrams.

Ratner was on board for quite a while, to the point where he cast Anthony Hopkins (who he’d worked with on Red Dragon) in the role of Superman’s natural father, Jor-El. Hopkins himself has since admitted as much, telling MTV that “I was going to do the movie with Brett, and I don’t know what happened”. He added that politics had its part to play, and that “I think Brett was out of line with something and they said thank you very much. I never heard from Brett since then but I was all set to it.”

read more – The JJ Abrams Superman Movie You Never Saw

Singer in the end would, with the help of computer trickery, reuse Marlon Brando in the role instead. Hopkins eventually got his comic book movie moment when Kenneth Branagh cast him in Marvel’s Thor.

Jim Caviezel – Cyclops

Still perhaps best known for his portrayal of Jesus in Mel Gibson’s brutal The Passion Of The Christ, Jim Caviezel was the original choice to play Cyclops in the first X-Men movie.

The role eventually got taken by James Marsden, but the only reason that Caviezel dropped out in the end was down to the old problem of scheduling difficulties. He had to quit the role when it was realized that production would clash with another movie he was committed to, the underrated Frequency.

Tom Cruise – Iron Man

Tom Cruise never fully signed on the dotted line to play Iron Man, but it was no secret he was involved in the project for some time. The actor was not only set to star as Tony Stark in the movie, but also produce it. And Marvel’s Kevin Feige admitted as much at the time, revealing that discussions had been ongoing for a number of years.

Cruise eventually dropped out of the project though, saying back in 2004 that “as it was lining up, it just didn’t feel to me like it was going to work.” With Cruise departing the project, Kevin Feige would ultimately recruit Jon Favreau to direct Iron Man, and he in turn cast Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role. Cruise, to date, hasn’t taken a comic book character on.

Arnold Schwarzenegger – Doctor Octopus

Once upon a time, it was James Cameron who was battling to get a Spider-Man movie made. This was pre-Titanic and Avatar, and Cameron was facing a lengthy battle in the first place just to get access to the rights for a Spider-Man picture.

At one point Cameron intended to use Doctor Octopus as the villain in his Spider-Man film, and he’d talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger – then at the height of his powers – to take on the role. Arnie was in discussions for the role, but ultimately Cameron couldn’t agree with the studio as for a direction to take the movie. He parted ways, and several years later, it would be Sam Raimi – with the help of Alfred Molina – who brought a film to the screen with Doc Ock in it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger – Sgt. Rock

Arnie did go on to play a comic book character, with his peerless performance as Mr Freeze in Batman & Robin. But as well as Doctor Octopus, he was attached for a time to play Sgt. Rock. This was in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when a film of Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert’s World War II infantry officer was being discussed.

Published by DC, Sgt. Rock was a very American, very able soldier. A terrific shot, able to survive more damage than Arnie did in the film Eraser, it was nonetheless something of a puzzle that he’d be played by an Austrian. Nonetheless, several screenplays were developed, including one by Die Hard scribe Steven E. de Souza, who told us how Sgt. Rock’s Austrian accent would have been explained. At one stage, Bruce Willis was linked with the role too, but it was Schwarzenegger who was attached, eventually dropping out as assorted attempts to mount the film failed. 

Michael Biehn – Spider-Man

We’re back to James Cameron’s Spider-Man project again here. It was around 1994 when it finally looked as if he might be getting the project going, and at that stage, he’d settled on his webslinger too. Regular collaborator Michael Biehn, whose career best work came in Cameron’s The Terminator and Aliens, was considered to play Spider-Man/Peter Parker.

However, at that stage the film that Cameron was looking to make was a tricky, technically demanding one, to the point where it wasn’t going to happen. Cameron instead chose to make True Lies, and his Spider-Man project ultimately fell apart, taking Biehn’s interpretation of Spider-Man with it.

Billy Dee Williams – Two-Face

Tim Burton persuaded Billy Dee Williams – still best known as Lando Calrissian, of course – to take on the small role of Harvey Dent in his 1989 Batman movie. You don’t need to be an expert in the history of Batman to know that Dent goes on to become Two-Face, and the story goes that Williams took the role on the assumption that he’d follow that transformation through.

Furthermore, it seems that Williams signed a pay-or-play contract to that effect, locking him in for the role, unless Warner Bros paid him his fee anyway. That, ultimately, is what the studio chose to do as well. When it became clear that Tim Burton wouldn’t be back for Batman 3, Joel Schumacher was hired, and he opted to take Two-Face in a different direction for Batman Forever. Williams apparently wasn’t too enamored with the idea of Two-Face ultimately playing second fiddle to the Riddler in that movie. Tommy Lee Jones thus took over the role of Dent/Two-Face, and Williams got his check anyway.

Incidentally, rumors also suggest that Mel Gibson was offered the role of Two-Face, but couldn’t accept it due to clashes with the production of Braveheart.

Terrence Howard – War Machine

When the first Iron Man film was released, taking on the role of James “Rhodey” Rhodes was Terrence Howard. The plan was that he’d move on to play War Machine in Iron Man 2, but that was before things went sour.

Lots has been said and written about Marvel and director Jon Favreau’s decision to recast the role for Iron Man 2. Allegations flew around that Howard hadn’t been the easiest to work with, and that Favreau hadn’t been happy with the performance anyway. Howard, in return, has placed the blame firmly at the door of Robert Downey Jr. for him not being able to wear the War Machine suit. In Howard’s words, “it turns out that the person that I helped become Iron Man, when it was time to re-up for the second one, took the money that was supposed to go to me and pushed me out.”

Don Cheadle took on the role from Iron Man 2 onwards…

Nicolas Cage – The Scarecrow

Cage again! This time, he was lined up for Joel Schumacher’s third Batman film. This would have seen him take on the role of the Scarecrow in what was said to be called Batman Triumphant.

Whether this one got as far as a firm deal being put in place is unclear, but what is more certain is that Batman & Robin derailed any chance of it happening at all. While the film opened strongly, its box office since collapsed (albeit still grossing over $200 million worldwide), and the movie was quickly derided as one of the worst blockbusters in living memory. That reputation has not been shaken off.

Schumacher, who at the time was alternating Batman movies and John Grisham adaptations for Warner Bros, abandoned his plan for Batman Triumphant. When the Scarecrow would eventually appear on screen, in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins back in 2005, it would be Cillian Murphy who took on the role.