March 2009

Some films languish in production hell forever and for a long time it looked as though that might be the case with Watchmen. Based on the incredible graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons the film has been on and off for the last few years with various directors, studios and cast members in the frame. In the end Zack Snyder did a great job with it, the casting was excellent and he stayed faithful to the source material. When you look at some of the actors who might have been cast it is hard not to recoil in horror.

Watchmen was first touted as a film adaptation as early as 1986. To begin with the project was kicked around from studio to studio with producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver attached. They tried to get Alan Moore to do the screenplay but he declined and so various writers wrote drafts. The project moved to Warner Bros.

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The Matrix was released in 1999 and on a budget of $65 million it took over $460 million at the worldwide box office. It was a hugely successful action flick which took various ideas from popular science fiction and weaved them together into an epic and visually stunning film. The cast in the film are very good but none of them were first choice for the roles. An awful lot of big name actors and actresses turned down parts in The Matrix.

The lead role of Neo proved to be the most difficult to fill. It seems strange because even although I am not a huge fan of Keanu Reeves he does seem perfect for the part. He never has to say more than five sentences in a row during the whole film until his final speech. Anyway the list of actors who turned the role down is surprisingly long and it starts with Will Smith who decided he’d rather do Wild Wild West.

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Well Titanic was certainly a unique production, not my favourite film, but an interesting project from the talented James Cameron. This was the first film to have a budget of $200 million which sounds like a lot until you consider that it made $1.8 billion at the box office worldwide. It doesn’t really qualify as a troubled production and it managed to avoid hitting an iceberg but it wasn’t all plain sailing.

To begin with the studio wanted to cast Matthew McConaughey in the lead role and Billy Crudup, Christian Bale and even Stephen Dorff were considered before Cameron insisted on Leonardo DiCaprio. Michael Biehn almost got the part of Cal Hockey and Rob Lowe was also considered before it went to Billy Zane. Robert De Niro was reportedly offered the role of Captain Smith which eventually went to Bernard Hill and Fay Wray turned down the part of the older Rose.

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Goodfellas was a superb gangster film released in 1990 to critical acclaim. It was all about the life of a gangster called Henry Hill and his meteoric rise in the New York mafia. Based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi, a New York crime reporter, the story had a real touch of authenticity about it and that’s what attracted director Martin Scorsese to make the film. He co-wrote the screenplay with Pileggi and they went through 12 drafts together before they were ready to shoot in 1989.

The film has gone down in history as one of the greatest gangster tales ever brought to the screen. It has been highly publicised that the film makers consulted people such as the real Henry Hill to achieve a realistic feel to the action and various other real life gangsters claimed some involvement.

The casting for Goodfellas was absolutely perfect and as usual with great films it is tough to imagine different actors in the roles. However several of the roles were by no means definite and they could well have cast other people.

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