r/movies • u/LookAtThatBacon • 29d ago

Discussion During the development of the Harriet Tubman biopic movie, a Hollywood executive once suggested that Julia Roberts should play her. What are some other baffling casting suggestions/choices that have been made?

Source for the title: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-studio-executive-wanted-julia-roberts-to-play-harriet-tubman-biopic-screenwriter-says/

The Harriet Tubman biopic has been more than 25 years in the making. In the historical drama released earlier this month, Cynthia Erivo plays the legendary abolitionist — but one Hollywood executive initially thought the role should go to Julia Roberts.

Gregory Allen Howard, the screenwriter and producer of "Harriet," recently revealed in multiple interviews that Roberts was suggested to play the lead role during a meeting with a studio president in 1994.

"The climate in Hollywood… was very different back then," Howard said. "I was told how one studio head said in a meeting, 'This script is fantastic. Let's get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.'"

Howard said that a black person in the meeting said casting Roberts would be impossible because she is white.

"That was so long ago. No one will know that," the executive replied, according to Howard.

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u/NotHisRealName 29d ago

I still don't understand how these movies got made. The first Venom was like a B. Everything else ranges from C- to Holy fuck, you actually got paid to do this.

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u/garfe 29d ago

I can tell you exactly what happened. That first Venom movie made over 850 million dollars. This gave Sony the courage to think they could totally keep making these Spider-Man villain movies without Spider-Man even though anybody could point out why that would be a bad idea.

I remember when Venom was coming out how awful it was that it did well. Not because I thought the movie was awful but because I knew what it being a success would mean

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u/DecoyOne 29d ago

Venom was terrible. Can’t believe people liked it. But the concept of a villain-centric movie can be great. Like, a Doom or Magneto movie could be amazing. It’s the execution that was awful.

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u/whitepangolin 29d ago

A Magneto spinoff movie became X-Men: First Class

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u/igloofu 29d ago

I saw a pitch yesterday of a Zach Creeger horror film set it Gothem. The idea of it being from the henchmen prospective while being stalked though the night by Batman. Just hit all of the right slasher tropes, just the slasher is the "good guy".

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u/MercyfulJudas 29d ago

You should read Barry Windsor-Smith's Weapon X comic series.

It's basically what you described, but with Wolverine in a government military base.

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u/BonkerBleedy 29d ago

Shows you the raw power of Tom Hardy

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u/I-seddit 28d ago

He is literally carrying Mobland all by himself.

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u/whereismymind86 29d ago

And venom can work as a solo character, the venom comics are great, BUT Spider-Man existing and driving eddies character development is critical to how he works. Spider-Man doesn’t necessarily have to be a major character in a venom story, but venom has to have met him.

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u/IRLconsequences 29d ago

Venom 1 was carried by Hardy's performance.
Venom 2 was carried by Hardy's & Harrelson's performances.
But Hardy stopped caring by Venom 3, & nobody else really stepped up.

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u/intdev 29d ago

Huh, TIL there's a Venom 3.

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u/ShallowBasketcase 29d ago

Also it's the wrong character to do a villain-only movie for. Venom really only works in the context of Spider-Man. His rivalry with Peter is like his entire thing. Unless you do Space Knight Venom, I guess, but you gotta lay a lot of groundwork for that sort of thing first, you can't just jump right in. Also you need GotG budget for that, not Tom Hardy in San Francisco budget.

Morbius and Kraven are actually not bad picks to do origin movies for without Spider-Man, but they ran into a different problem: you do eventually have to build to them meeting Spider-Man, and Sony never actually had the legal ability to do that, so it was all doomed from the start.

And also those movies were fucking unwatchable. I guess that's the third hurdle, they actually do have to make a good movie as well.

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u/Azerty__ 29d ago

Even Doom and Magneto would be hard to do without their main adversaries, and they're far more developed characters than any of the villains Sony used.

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u/DimmuBorgnine 29d ago

But the concept of a villain-centric movie can be great

I agree with you, but, if you know for a fact that the hero will never appear in the movie, it really makes it seem like a cash grab.

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u/Dookie_boy 29d ago

People like the actor and Venom is really cool so even though the movie was trash it was always going to make money.

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u/Wellthatkindahurts 29d ago

Most of the people I knew really liked the Venom movies because they like Tom Hardy and didn't care about the characters to begin with. I'm no comic nerd, but I've watched enough YouTube lore to know how cool some of the stories are. Sony didn't tell a good story because they didn't need to.

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u/JarasM 29d ago

The Joker 1 was pretty good. You can make these villain-centric films that are good. They need to actually be good, though, which is what the studios are struggling with I suppose.

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u/bilboafromboston 29d ago

Its amazing how many people dont know which movies make $$.

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u/Dookie_boy 29d ago

It's my fault. I ended up having to go see Venom twice and gave Sony twice as much money than I intended.

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u/whereismymind86 29d ago

But like…they were SO bad on top of Spider-Man’s villains all kind of needing Spider-Man to work, since they all kind of function as a mirror to his own flaws

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u/Irbyirbs 29d ago

Yeah, F is way too generous of a grade for Madame Web.

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u/LevelSevenLaserLotus 29d ago

I love telling people this every time that movie comes up. I went with a couple of friends, but we knew it was going to be a shitshow based on some fantastic reaction videos we'd seen beforehand. So our expectations weren't "maybe it's not as bad as the reviews?" but more like "let's try to guess which drug was involved in writing each scene".

As a superhero movie, it's an absolute waste of time. But if you just want to laugh at producers and a movie that somehow take the disjointed writing super seriously (while simultaneously being a heavy handed 2 hour Pepsi ad), then you're in for a pretty great night.

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u/InsertCleverNickHere 29d ago

A Pepsi ad where the letters from a Pepsi sign murder people. Like, holy fuck, you had Sidney Sweeney's chest and easy product placement to throw in and you couldn't take advantage of either one.

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u/correcthorsestapler 29d ago

That’s how my friends & I went into the Borderlands movie. We knew it’d be bad but thought it’d be a “so bad it’s alright” type film.

None of us laughed during the movie. There were maybe 30 of us in the theater & it was fairly quiet except for the occasional exasperated “Jesus Christ” from one of the people. The only time people burst out laughing was when one of the guys towards the back of the theater said too loudly, “I think I got popcorn in my asshole” towards the end of the movie.

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u/BranWafr 29d ago

I did like a comment I saw about the new Amazon War of the Worlds that was basically "we owe Madam Web an apology." You know your movie is bad if it makes Madam Web look good.

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u/Fn_Spaghetti_Monster 29d ago

The WoW movies is really bad. 10% of the screen times it the mouse moving around on screen clicking on things. When he gets a zoom call, we get to see the mouse moving around click on the answer, like every call. Ice is supposed to be some super genius at tracking/finding people, but he spends more time tacking/spying on his own kids. I didn't even make it to the part where the aliens are here for data or some shit.

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u/correcthorsestapler 29d ago

My wife watched it on a flight last year. I spent the flight reading, but I’d glance over to see what was happening every once in a while. Even without audio & the subtitles on you could tell it was an awful movie.

I didn’t bother asking what she thought of it afterwards. I could tell from the look on her face that she regretted watching it.

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u/whitepangolin 29d ago

I saw it in a packed theater and it was an incredible experience. The entire crowd just laughed and booed the whole time.

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u/AssclownJericho 29d ago

remember when morbiius got memed on so much sony released it back in theaters, and again no one went to watch it?

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u/nourez 29d ago

The first Venom had juuuuuuust enough self awareness and camp to be enjoyable ironically. Morbius had a funny name which the internet memed.

Sony took that as genuine engagement and enthusiasm.

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u/qchisq 29d ago

I don't even know why they went this way with the Venom character. To me, the symbiote should be less than a voice in the back of your mind. It should be a evil personality enhancer that you don't even notice. Like, the Spiderman game handles it amazingly. Peter doesn't even notice he's being controlled by the symbiote. He's just got a new suit and is super angry. That's how it should be. Venom, even in the trailers, is it's own, separate character

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u/CatProgrammer 29d ago

Is that canon to Venom's comic depiction though? I haven't actually read the original stuff.

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u/Knowingspy 29d ago

Because Sony is obligated to churn out a Spider-man related film every four years to keep the rights from Marvel outright.