LRF What If's

[Chad Taylor]

Inspired by the trivia section of the LRFDb, I was curious if anyone had any juicy anecdotes about their LRF career that never saw the light of day - i.e. cancelled projects, famous roles that almost went to someone else, etc.

I'll start: I mentioned in an interview recently that one of the my first pitches for the studio involved The Rock but was cancelled in pre-production. It was a sci-fi comedy directed by Matthew Vaughn called ELITE Squad about a special ops team (led by Rocky) sent in to investigate a crashed alien ship on Earth. The twist is that Rock and his second-in-command (Zac Efron) are killed in the first ten minutes in mundane ways. And so the film follows the rest of the buffoons (who are nothing without their commander) trying to kill aliens and escape the ship (including using Rock's corpse as a shield). The other four were Adam Driver, Donald Glover, Alison Brie, and Jenny Slate. It was a bit wacky and just never up to the standard I try to hold my films to so it was scrapped. But glad to have worked with most of that cast in the meantime.

As far as casting "what if's", I'm sure you can find plenty of those on my blog but a few that stand out are Joseph Gordon-Levitt being the original choice for the lead of Calamity and Daniel Radcliffe being who I envisioned when I wrote Ehrenreich's part in American Dream (both changes were definitely the right decisions in the end).

[apj]

It's in the trivia section that Scoot McNairy beat out Timothy Olyphant and Adam Scott for the role of Ted Kord in Blue Beetle. However, it's not stated that I wanted to switch to Adam Scott before the film came out, but it had already begun production. Had that change happened, it could have drastically altered the LRF landscape. McNairy has appeared in nine films since Blue Beetle (including reprising his role as Ted Kord in the Booster Gold films, as well as Justice League International). Would McNairy be as much of a go-to supporting actor without the exposure of the Blue Beetle role? If Adam Scott had portrayed the character, would his career have taken off in a similar fashion?

[Chad Taylor]

Feb 3, 2020 21:36:57 GMT -7 apj said:

It's in the trivia section that Scoot McNairy beat out Timothy Olyphant and Adam Scott for the role of Ted Kord in Blue Beetle. However, it's not stated that I wanted to switch to Adam Scott before the film came out, but it had already begun production. Had that change happened, it could have drastically altered the LRF landscape. McNairy has appeared in nine films since Blue Beetle (including reprising his role as Ted Kord in the Booster Gold films, as well as Justice League International). Would McNairy be as much of a go-to supporting actor without the exposure of the Blue Beetle role? If Adam Scott had portrayed the character, would his career have taken off in a similar fashion?

Love it. Just the kind of wormhole I was looking for haha. I could definitely see Scott as Beetle but, as someone who has written McNairy's Kord multiple times now, it really is weird to think of anyone else being that part. 

[Jimmy Ellis]

Tom Hardy was originally the first choice for the Cold War menace Aleksandr Kuznetsov in my debut film, Missing Men, that ultimately went to Jared Leto which in my opinion put the film in the green profit wise

[Mo Buck Writers Association]

My first few films at LRF weren't a success. You probably all know my hatred for Hunt, but it's Maria that put me on the map (starring Brie Larson). It kicked off a trilogy of critically acclaimed films starring Larson, but Brie wasn't my first choice for the role. Shailene Woodley was considered for the role and I changed for Brie at the last minute before sending my pitch.

I remembered feeling a bit down after Hunt's critical and commercial failure and gave myself one last chance with Maria. If Woodley would have been in the lead, would my LRF career stopped after just two films?

That's probably the biggest what if of my career.

[Wesley Campbell]

I hear y'all. I have wonder if I corrected the easy mistakes I made about Saga and Bone, what would happen...


I wonder that soooo much I wonder if I should have done TV shows for them.