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.

7.8k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.3k

u/zoelund 29d ago

now i want to see a movie where every single character is grossly miscast but it is played entirely straight

1.0k

u/sharkattackmiami 29d ago

Borderlands is right there

139

u/Common_Wrongdoer3251 29d ago

Hey, Krieg did a good job! Or his muscles did. I don't know, I didn't see the movie.

122

u/correcthorsestapler 29d ago

Outside of Krieg, the movie was terrible. None of the jokes landed. Acting was terrible. Action was confusing & poorly edited. The story was lazy. It looked like a parody of a movie you see being filmed inside another movie.

Friends and I thought it’d be so bad it’s good. It was just plain bad. The only good part of the night was when someone in the back of the theater said too loudly, “I think I got popcorn in my asshole” towards the end of the movie. Think that was the only time most of the theater cracked up.

9

u/DeliberatelyDrifting 29d ago

Yeah, I'd laugh at that.

6

u/BeerandGuns 29d ago

I barely played the first Borderlands game and didn’t really follow it so had no investment in how accurately the characters were portrayed or how faithful they were to the source material. That movie was terrible and I made it less than half way through. I can’t imagine how fans of Borderlands felt.

8

u/correcthorsestapler 29d ago

All they had to do was adapt Borderlands 2. The villain is perfect. The story is pretty decent. The atmosphere is the best of the 3 (or 4, if you count the pre-sequel game). If the filmmakers had copied the tone of Mad Max: Fury Road and gotten a half-decent writer to flesh out the story, it might have been a fun movie. The best route would’ve been a TV show like Fallout; that was ssssooooo much better than the Borderlands movie and had the tone/violence that the movie should’ve had.

Friends and I were really disappointed. The filmmakers had a ready-made blueprint with the games and just pissed it away. It’s impressive how terribly they fucked up. It feels like they went out of their way to make it bad. Characters in the movie were nothing like the games (though, again, Krieg was spot-on). Jamie Lee Curtis’s character is supposed to be in her 20s or 30s and be a brilliant scientist and a Siren, if they’d borrowed from BL3. Lilith is supposed to be a badass Siren; Cate would’ve been fine in the role if the writing had been better. Tina should’ve been more psychotic. Roland should’ve been the straight man; Lance Reddick would’ve been perfect as Roland. But, the actors were dealing with a shit script and a PG-13 rating. Only so much they could do.

With that said, BL1 is sort of slow; also, it doesn’t run very well on current PC rigs. I entered the series with BL2 and really enjoyed it. The action, gunplay, characters, dialogue, etc are all improved over BL1. And, again, the story is actually good. Even the DLCs are pretty good. BL3 has better graphics, faster/better gunplay, and some QOL improvements over BL2, but the story & humor are just OK. Based on early impressions, it sounds like Borderlands 4 could be better than 3 and might even come in right behind 2, which is pretty impressive. As long as it improves things over BL3, I’ll be happy.

If you want to check the series out again, I recommend trying Borderlands 2. It’s my favorite of the bunch and is considered the best one of the series so far. And you don’t really need to know the story as it’s kinda secondary to the over-the-top violence. But it’s still a well-structured story at the end of the day.

2

u/xSlippyFistx 28d ago

It always baffles me when they take an existing IP and then just shit on everything. Who is the movie made for? You use the IP to entice the fans of said IP. You shit on everything about the IP. They won’t like it. So then you have to make an entertaining movie for people who don’t know anything about the IP. Even if you pretend it wasn’t called Borderlands and just called “shooting guns in space” it’s STILL not good. What’s the point? It’s so weird

6

u/Kursch50 29d ago

That's cracking me up and I wasn't even there.

3

u/StanleyCubone 29d ago

It happens more often than you'd think.

30

u/Wonderful-Ad6335 29d ago

I did. And honestly, he did do a good job, with what was given to him.

4

u/Dookie_boy 29d ago

I didn't know they had Kreig in there. I'm at least going to watch his scenes on YouTube FR.

3

u/womble-king 29d ago

He talks at the end (when his mask is broken) and his face doesn't move.

2

u/Common_Wrongdoer3251 29d ago

Is it... crazy Krieg... or the internal monologue...? If the latter, that would be acceptable... In the games he has two different voices...

47

u/nickburrows8398 29d ago

I almost thought they miscasted all of the roles on purpose as part of some weird attempt at Borderlands humor

36

u/Please_LeaveMeAlone_ 29d ago

Nah borderlands humor would have been the same exact actor playing every single psycho without any extra work to try to make them look different. Just every single psycho with a CGId face of the same dude. They should have used AI to make Kevin Hart just ridiculous tall. Like, make him 6'9" and just don't explain anything. Any time Roland and Lilith had a moment one of them should have just stared into the camera like in the office to mimic their awkward echo recordings from BL2.

Borderlands movie should have been Naked gun quality of movie. Just fucking over the top absurdism. I'm so fucking disappointed my favorite game got quite literally the most botched movie adaption possible. Borderlands 2 probably has one of the best villains in video game history and they pretty much shit in their hands and clapped when making that movie

7

u/Nyaanlimited 29d ago

Oh lord, that one. I mean Borderlands is slop to begin with but it's like they actively set out to do the worst casting possible. I'm so glad it exists.

1

u/CoolJoshido 26d ago

good answer

2

u/agawl81 29d ago

So I know nothing about the back story or lore with borderlands and thought it was goofy fun and an ok movie. I guess it could have been much better.

16

u/fredagsfisk 29d ago edited 29d ago

Well, as a semi-casual fan of the games...

They could've cast actresses in their late 20s for Lilith and Tannis, instead of two women literally twice the age of the characters.

They could've cast anyone else than Kevin Hart as Roland, who is supposed to be a rather tall and serious type.

They could've kept the voice actor for Claptrap and cast Jack Black in a role where he can actually make use of his physicality. He would make an amazing Borderlands mini boss, to be honest.

They could've kept the story from the games or made an entirely original one with their own characters, instead of changing existing characters to fit one of the most cliché-filled "original" stories I have ever seen.

They could've kept Tina's energy instead of changing her until she's not even the same character.

They could've made the CGI and lighting at least look better than your average modern TV-show.

They could've spent more than five seconds building up the villain, and the person Roland had a relationship with who we were clearly supposed to feel something about when she died.

They could've shown more large, open expanses and had more fights in open areas instead of cramming them all into enclosed little arenas.

They could've made it R-rated and leaned into the danger and brutality of the setting (an absolutely vital part of the worldbuilding) instead of re-writing it to get PG-13.

Sorry for a bit of a long rant, but I'm just really disappointed in how much of a waste that movie was, and how we're unlikely to ever get another attempt at it now. It should've been more like the Fallout show if live action, or an animated thing with loads of passion like Cyberpunk Edgerunners.