14 DAY TRIAL // It’s hard to imagine today what Wolverine would have looked like with another actor but Hugh Jackman in the role, or how “Man of Steel” would have played out with a different cast, but the actors who appeared in these movies weren’t first choices.
It’s a rare thing for a movie studio to start work on a project with a certain actor or actress in mind, and to sign them after a round of successful negotiations. Usually, as the infamous Sony Hack made it clear, studio bosses consider a group of actors for one single role, narrowing down their options after every meeting.
For true movie buffs, hearing that someone else was up for a role made memorable by a fellow actor is the kind of stuff of behind-the-scenes trivia that’s worth talking about.
Viggo missed the boat on several major projects
Viggo Mortensen is promoting “Far from Men” with a very extensive interview with The Daily Beast. If you’re a fan of this particular actor, you probably know that his interviews are always interesting: not because he says scandalous stuff or namedrops other stars, but because he tends to go off topic and get into even all kinds of unrelated discussions.
In this piece, for instance, he talks about the boats he missed in his career, both before and after he was offered the role of Aragorn in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. This one made him a popular name, but he is yet to achieve A-list status in Hollywood.
Make no mistake, with performances like those in “Eastern Promises,” “The Road” and “A Dangerous Method,” Viggo has more than proved his worth to the critics, but he’s yet to go mainstream. A role in any one of the movies he passed on would have done that.
He was offered the role of Wolverine that eventually went to Hugh Jackman. Viggo recalls how he took his 10-year-old son to meet with director Bryan Singer and how thrilled he, the son, was. He might have been up for the challenge of doing so many appearances as Wolverine, but a previous commitment prevented him from taking Singer up on the offer.
A look behind the curtain
He was also offered 2 roles in “Man of Steel” and the role of the Huntsman in “Snow White and the Huntsman.” We’re assuming he was wanted either for Jor-El or for General Zod, which eventually went to Russell Crow and the brilliant Michael Shannon.
As for “Snow White,” the studio probably wanted someone younger and with more pull for the younger demographic, since they eventually got Chris Hemsworth, Thor of Marvel’s Avengers franchise, for the Huntsman.
But here’s the most interesting part: Viggo says “Snow White and the Huntsman” was an entirely different beast when he read the script and considered the offer.
“The Huntsman in Snow White and the Huntsman […] isn’t a comic book but is almost like a comic book,” he says. “They changed it a lot. When they offered it to me, it was a different story and seemed more justified to be called Snow White and the Huntsman. The movie they ended up making should have been called Snow White and the Wicked Witch. The original script was a lot funnier and there was a longer apprenticeship. It was almost like The African Queen a little bit.”