Hugh Jackman as Wolverine seems to have been a pretty good casting choice, looking back at it. Studios must have agreed too, I mean he portrayed Wolverine like ten times in the movies that followed, including Logan, which was fantastic. But at the time it was a risky decision and certainly not the first choice:
>”The first time Hugh Jackman read, he didn’t get cast. He was great, but he was the nicest guy in the world and he was very tall and super handsome, so we didn’t think he was Wolverine…
>Tom Rothman, the head of Fox, said it was going to be Dougray Scott, so we cast him while he was doing Mission: Impossible II and we kept getting calls from Tom Cruise saying, ‘We just need him a little longer.’ When we were about to start shooting the movie, we hadn’t seen Wolverine or fit him for costumes so we sent costumer Louise Mingenbach down to Australia to fit him, and it turned out he had been in a motorcycle accident shooting Mission: Impossible II and he’s dropped down to like 150 pounds. It just wasn’t going to work.”
[https://screenrant.com/hugh-jackman-wolverine-casting-story/](https://screenrant.com/hugh-jackman-wolverine-casting-story/)
What other films do you think had a risky casting choice that really paid off?
by Cherchez-lafemme
23 Comments
The top of this list for me will forever be Michael Keaton as BATMAN!
Heath Ledger is probably the biggest one. Yall remember the backlash at the casting? Contrast the ridicule with the praise after. Heath turned in one of the most immersive performances in the past 20 years that is still praised.
Bruce Willis in Die Hard.
Well….if you’re mentioning Tom Cruise…
The author Anne Rice personally objected to his casting as Lestat in Interview With a Vampire (she wanted Rutger Hauer).
However she changed her tune upon seeing it and apologised.
He really nailed that role. And I say that even as someone who normally can’t stand Tom cruise 😂
Daniel Craig as Bond.
Daniel Craig as Bond faced a lot of prejudices, myself included. It took me less than 6 minutes of casino royal to be fully convinced how good of a choice he was.
Back when the MCU first started my friends and I had a debate about Chris Evans as Captain America. We were very skeptical since he played The Human Torch in Fantastic Four with such over-the-top humor, we thought there was no way that he had the range for a more serious role. We were very wrong and now I can never envision anyone else being Captain America.
I remember rolling my eyes when I heard they cast Heath Ledger as Joker in The Dark Knight. I was very happy to have been proven wrong!
Most of the casting in the Kelvinverse *Star Trek* films. They *(the films)* have their issues, but the core crew of the Enterprise turned out very good in the roles.
A blonde Bond?!?
[Despite rumors that had everyone from Shia LaBeouf to Josh Hartnett being cast in Kenneth Branagh’s version of Thor, two virtual unknowns will instead be handed the keys to the Marvel franchise. Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, whom you might recall from the opening scene of Star Trek, will play the Norse superhero, and Tom Hiddleston has been cast as his nemesis, Loki.](https://www.vulture.com/2009/05/marvel_rolls_dice_casts_no-nam.html)
John Travolta in Pulp Fiction: A brilliant foresight of Quintin. It was such an odd choice, and the whole movie is better because of it.
Adam Driver in Star Wars: Initially, I was not a fan of his performance, but he ended up being one of the best parts.
Harry Styles in Dunkirk: He was phenomenal, and I did not see that coming.
Dave Bautista as Drax was seem as another “wrestler making movies”. He nailed that humor.
With that, Channing Tatum in 21 Jump Street.
And adding to the list: Christian Bale as Batman.
Craig as Bond, Keaton and Pattinson(I myself was hard on this one) as Batman, Ledger as Joker, and Bruce Willis as John McClain.
Ryan Gosling in First Man. I haven’t seen a lot of his stuff but most of what I’ve seen his acting it pretty wooden. I thought casting him as Neil Armstrong was a bad idea but Neil was kind of a wooden guy and the casting ended up working.
I liked Nathaniel Carter as the dad in the one where two unfamiliar people are sitting on a bus bench and one borrows a cigarette from the other…the young one borrowed it…and he says “Hey, this is the brand my long lost dad smoked” and the other fellow says “Did he look like this?” and he rips a prosthetic beard off his chin, and it IS his dad. It really is. So they say, “Screw the bus, let’s steal a car,” and they hot wire a Lincoln Continental, and they TAKE OFF! They’re really cruising and getting along and doing father son things, like betting on horses and extortion, and suddenly a woman…a very beautiful woman…puts her hand on the dad’s shoulder and says “Remember me?” and it is his own LONG LOST MOTHER, but she is so much younger. She was a time travel scientist and she made a machine to go back in time and put her younger self into the machine and sent her forward in time and she was given a picture of her son so that’s how she recognized him, and he said “Yes. This is your grandson.” And she looks at the boy and she snaps her fingers and he disappears because she hadn’t had kids yet so there’s a little bit of timelIne paradox going on here, but just follow the story. So the dad says, “Why did you do that?” and she says because she is erasing her descendants because of evil purposes, and the dad says,”Oh no!” And he runs off, and she chases him. She chases him full speed. And finally they are on a dock and there’s nowhere else to run and the dad smiles and says “I have a surprise for you” and he snaps HIS fingers and his mom turns into her own great grandmother who is just a pile of bones at this point in history and she falls into a dusty heap. APPARENTLY HE INHERITED THE SNAP. The dad rubs some of her bone dust on his fingers and snaps again and his son materializes again, but as a sperm and the dad says one last goodbye to the son he abandoned and flicks him into the river and pulls out a cigarette and walks away.
Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart.
Chris Pratt as Mario
I remember thinking Hugh Jackman was going to be a star when he was doing promotion for an Aussie film Paperback Hero, and was happy that he landed the role in X-Men. But I had assumed that he scored the role of Cyclops, thus was shocked that he actually landed Wolverine, which was a huuuge deal for any comic fan because he was considered the coolest most popular hero ever.
Ryan Gosling as Ken. A lot of people thought he was far too old for the role, and didn’t think the human version of a classically handsome doll should have that many crow’s feet, laugh lines and wrinkles. Now people often argue that he stole the whole film.
Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man.
Honestly the casting for the new mad max movie had me rolling my eyes at the exec who probably said ‘let’s get ana taylor and ledger, they’re so hot right now!’
But I feel they pulled it off real well
I really enjoy Ben Affleck as Batman