Wild Casting

Can you imagine Doris Day as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967)? That's who producer Joseph E. Levine wanted before Miss Day turned it down thinking the part in bad taste, and it went to Anne Bancroft. How about James Cagney as Robin Hood in 1938? A contract dispute caused Warner Bros. to drop him and hire Errol Flynn instead. Do you know that Margaret Mitchell wanted Groucho Marx to play Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind (1939)? But perhaps the wildest casting choice in the History of Hollywood involved The Terminator. James Cameron had directed a movie called Piranha II: The Spawning (1981). "I'm sick of these B-Movies. I got to direct a better movie than this. I'll write my own script and won't sell it till I get to direct it. What kind of script should I write? I'm going to have a low budget, I want to film on the streets of LA-- I'll do a story about a cyborg from the future who attacks people in Los Angeles in the Present." And that of course was The Terminator(1984). After the script was finished Cameron received a phone call from Orion pictures," James, we love your script. It's a go! We'll let you direct it. We will let you cast whoever you want within reason-- But we think we found the perfect guy to play the Terminator-- OJ SIMPSON! Oh and Arnold Schwartznegger can play the good guy Reese."

So James Cameron thought about it," OJ Simpson huh. Hmmm. No I can't see OJ Simpson as a killer." Needless to say Arnold got the part.