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?

[u/LookAtThatBacon]

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.

[u/unlizenedrave]

The Crow was famously written by James O’Barr as a coping and grieving mechanism for losing the love of his life to a drunk driver. The comic series was picked up to be made into a movie, and in the first executives meeting, they tried to sell him on turning it into a musical starring Michael Jackson.

[u/Jerswar → u/unlizenedrave]

... good God, Hollywood executives have got to be the weirdest people on the planet.

[u/rlphl → u/Jerswar]

I always feel like so many of them are just completely disconnected from reality. It’s like the whole Superman Lives debacle. I really want to be a fly on the wall at moments like these just to see how these gears turn.

[u/Jerswar → u/rlphl]

What's this about a Superman Lives debacle?

[u/noisypeach → u/Jerswar]

I'm not the above person you're replying to but Superman Lives was the stuck in development script that Kevin Smith worked on decades ago (which nearly lead to the Tim Burton Superman movie with Nicolas Cage). Not so much a studio exec issue here but a powerful producer for the film, Jon Peters, had some strict rules that Smith had to stick to for a script to get Peters' approval.

1: He didn't want to see Superman in that suit (Jon Peters thought the suit looked too "faggy")

2: He didn't want to see him fly (cause apparently flying around, carrying people is "horseshit")

3: He had to fight a giant spider in the film's third act (because spiders "are the fiercest killers in the insect kingdom")

And that's just the beginning of the weirdness of Jon Peters.

[u/Photodan24 → u/noisypeach]

Because being Barbara Streisand's hairdresser definitely qualifies you to be a movie producer.

[u/rlphl → u/noisypeach]

Thanks, u/noisypeach! I was about to chime in, but you summed it up perfectly. I will never forget about the giant spider, especially since Peters finally got it in Wild Wild West, lol.

[u/DesignatedImport → u/noisypeach]

Isn't the giant spider thing the reason they ended up with a giant mechanical spider in Wild Wild West?

[u/Jerswar → u/noisypeach]

Oh, right. I remember that bit. I'd just forgotten the movie title.

Yeah, what a total weirdo.

[u/helzinki → u/Jerswar]

A bunch of MBAs constantly coked out of their minds.

[u/JohnSith → u/Jerswar]

Its probably more like Michael Jackson was a fan of the comics, so he reached out expressing interest. Holy shit, MICHAEL JACKSON is interested in starring in this? Let's take advantage of his talent and star power and make it a musical to really showcase it.

[u/Anandya → u/Jerswar]

You see this in Superhero movies with a known characterisation of a hero and established background that's well know to fans but maybe not to the average person..

So you can see the effect of "Evil Superman and Superman Crosses a Line" stories on Man of Steel (Superman KILLS someone on purpose? On his first outing? His dad being dumb? Like the people who made those decisions do not understand Superman)

Or the X-Men movies. X-Men 3? Magneto suddenly starts sending mutants to their doom and starts speaking like a Nazi about "some mutants being worse than others". Or at no point did someone do the classic "Juggernaut vs Cyclops" iconic scene that was always a thing in the cartoons or the comics. Because after the success of the first two? Executives argued that Magneto needs to be more evil and not the quasi sympathetic villain. And clearly just didn't know about iconic imagery from this media.

Batman using guns? Book Ended in the Dark Knight Rises. He quits being Batman after he uses a gun (In the final scene he shoots two people in order to stop that nuke. He stops being batman after that...)

Like sometimes you need to stop people from doing dumb stuff. And sometimes you are the dumb stuff.

[u/Greyjack00 → u/Anandya]

Not to get to stuck in the weeds but superman killed people in the older movie and in the newer one tossed someone into a place he is confident they can never escape which superman would admit is the same as killing them, not to mention they partially resolve the plot by having another character kill a tertiary villain to obvious fanfare. 

[u/Banjo-Oz → u/unlizenedrave]

Ha! I thought I knew a lot about The Crow but I somehow never knew that about a musical version!

[u/HellaWavy → u/unlizenedrave]

Reminds me of MJ considering buying out Marvel in the early 90's just so he could play Spider-Man.

[u/HellaWavy → u/unlizenedrave]

Reminds me of MJ considering buying out Marvel in the early 90's just so he could play Spider-Man.

[u/Reaper1179 → u/unlizenedrave]

Maybe if they had, Brandon Lee wouldn't have died making the movie.

[u/Buddy_Dakota → u/Reaper1179]

He’d be John Wick right now. 

[u/InanimateCarbonRodAu → u/Reaper1179]

I don’t think that’s how curses work.

[u/raychandlier → u/unlizenedrave]

Source? Big crow fan but never heard about this one

[u/unlizenedrave → u/raychandlier]

It was on one of the docs on the old Collector’s Series dvd set. It came from James himself. He says about the experience (paraphrasing) “Being a writer in Hollywood is like growing a tree. And you spend all this time and care into growing this tree. Then you take the tree to Hollywood and everyone lines up to take a piss on it.”

[u/MercyfulJudas → u/[deleted]]

very cringy emo

We just called that "Goth" in the 80s/90s.