Hollywood history has hundreds of stories where some actor or other was originally going to star in some such movie that went on to be a big hit. Infamously, David Schwimmer was in the running for Agent J in Men in Black which of course went to Will Smith. Smith, in turn, passed on The Matrix which went to Keanu Reeves. It’s the way of big budget movies. Eddie Murphy has had his share of those. The actor recently told AP (which we saw on Variety) there are three big movies that he regrets turning down.
NBC
“Ghostbusters, I was supposed to do Ghostbusters,” Murphy recalled. “Didn’t do that, and Rush Hour. Didn’t do that. Oh, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Those are my big three ‘wish I would have done’ movies.”
Now, Ghostbusters we all sort of knew about. Initially, the film was written with Murphy in mind for the role that ultimately went to Ernie Hudson. Had Murphy done the film, the role would have been bigger, Winston would have appeared throughout. But because he turned down Ghostbusters, Murphy got to do Beverly Hills Cop which was *his* movie. Probably the right choice there. Rush Hour would have made for a different movie. Chris Tucker’s manic, high-pitched energy opposite Jackie Chan is a distinctive feature of that franchise. But it’s not hard to see how Murphy would have changed it and still made for a good movie.
The one that blows me away is Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Like, what?! He’d probably have been the Bob Hoskins role, because that’s the only major human role in the movie except for Christopher Lloyd’s Judge Doom and that doesn’t seem likely. What a weird, weird choice that would have been. Murphy himself says he didn’t know what to make of the premise.
“Who Framed Roger Rabbit just sounded ridiculous to me, and I passed on it. And afterwards, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s fucking amazing.’”
Gotta love those coulda-woulda-shoulda moments.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.
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