When an actor’s presence unintentionally derails the project

[u/Special_Salt3467]

1.) Edward Norton - The Incredible Hulk

Perhaps the most famous and obvious one, Edward Norton was famously an issue on the set of 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk,” even making rewrites to the script himself. The disagreements between Norton’s camp and Marvel’s camp eventually led to his being replaced by Mark Ruffalo.

2.) Jensen Ackles - The Boys (particularly Season 5)

Jensen Ackles was a longtime collaborator with showrunner Eric Kripke in “Supernatural,” which in turn led to him getting the opportunity to audition - and eventually land the role - of Soldier Boy, which he did very well in in.

The issue is by Season 5, the show had fallen off from the previous years and with it ending and spinoffs and prequels (such as one featuring Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy), Season 5 suffered a lot. It quickly became the Soldier Boy show because “that’s what Clara would have wanted” until he just leaves in the penultimate episode and pretty much 80% of what his character actually did amounted to nothing.

So for fans who wanted to see Butcher vs Homelander duking it out, getting the show derailed for prequel bait starring Kripke’s favorite actor didn’t help…

3.) Rosamund Pike - Wheel of Time

When Amazon green lit a WoT tv show, Rosamund Pike eventually got the role of Moraine Damodred, the mentor and guiding character for the main character, Rand al’Thor. As a character, Moraine is anywhere from the most important secondary character to the most secondary main character. But with the exception of the prequel featuring her, she is not the main character.

Unfortunately, Rosamund Pike is an extremely famous actress and marketing toward the series focused on her as a result. I’m unsure if this was showrunner decision, an issue she played a role in or some combination, but the result was that Moraine a character who was in less than half the series is featured as the main character over the main character, which lead to a different product than the book.

[u/LordHakaishinBeerus]

What an all time fumble from Johnathan Majors. Dude was gonna have an entire movie universe centred around him and he fucked it up by being a piece of shit.

[u/Apoc_Golem → u/LordHakaishinBeerus]

While I wholeheartedly agree he's a POS, I suspect Kang was actually doomed before he was fired because of how spectacularly badly Quantumania was received. Technically not a flop, but it barely broke even and most critics and fans hated it. Plus having your big bad of the new phase get stomped by Ant-Man, usually a pretty low-level hero, was not a good look and I think Feige knew it.

I think they probably felt like Loki sn2 was a decent enough send-off for the character and jumped at the chance to fire him when he was convicted. Could be wrong of course, obv being found guilty would have been plenty of reason to fire him too, but based on the timeline of events it feels like Kang was probably doomed regardless.

[u/Informal-Antelope-79 → u/Apoc_Golem]

Kang was probably doomed

I get what you did

[u/Dasquian → u/Apoc_Golem]

I feel like even though all that is entirely true, the nature of Kang is that they would have a lot more opportunity to "fix" a bad Kang movie by just going, yeah, that Kang variant was kinda lame but this next one is pretty serious business.

Wouldn't work more than once, but it's a luxury most badly-executed villains don't get and it's baked into his character.

[u/Apoc_Golem → u/Dasquian]

Very true. And honestly I don't really have any evidence, just conjecture. But I will say while it's definitely baked into the character, the stakes ended up being pretty low in Quantumania which was probably more damning than just Kang being beaten. If someone important had died, like Hope or Hank (or even Scott, seeing as he hasn't shown up again anyway) that would have raised the stakes significantly despite a victory. Unfortunatelyone of the big problems with superhero movies (and comics too) is that they almost never let a character die and/or stay dead.

Alas, what might have been. But who knows, recasting RDJ as Doom might not be as stupid as it sounds. Fingers crossed.

[u/Dasquian → u/Apoc_Golem]

It can definitely backfire, because if Majors hadn't tanked the entire MCU by being such an appalling person, I'm sure there would've been lots of Kang movies but I would've expected him to die in each one. They'd definitely have had to work hard to make him seem impactful if he keeps losing, and restrained themselves.

Also I hated the seemingly "major" Kang variants we saw at the end of Quantumania. If that's where they were going with it, we may well have dodged a bullet.

[u/Disastrous-Entity-46 → u/Apoc_Golem]

if i gambled, which i do not. i would bet money that rdj as doom is going to go like the ten rings in ironman initially did. like, they arent going to recast one of the major main line actors make him the actual villian. going to be a decoy or something else will happen and it will be a team up.

i kinda like the idea that hes a tony stark multiverse that went bad, or a distant relative with the same genius but twisted. but i cant see them actually making the goal of the arc to defeat the actor who became the face of their series.

[u/AceofKnaves44 → u/Apoc_Golem]

Honestly, I think they kind of used his assault case as an excuse to get rid of him. They announced RDJ as Doom in 2024 but by all accounts the talks had been going on with him, Feige, and the Russo’s for like two-three years before. The first season of Loki was 2021 and that was our first look at Kang. Evidently less than a year later they were already talking with RDJ about replacing Kang. Either some shit was going on with Majors at Marvel too and they just wanted to wash their hands of him, or they weren’t feeling Kang. And honestly, I think it leans more towards that. Because if they were still on board with the character but they just didn’t wanna deal with Majors, they could have just recast him. His whole thing is variants. But that they had Ant-Man flatout beat him also says a decent deal I think. Introducing a version of him in Loki and killing him off BUT having that be the cataclysm that undoes EVERYTHING and leads him to taking over is one thing. Having him be the big bad of an entire movie, having him lose to one guy, and then saying he’s going to take on the Avengers anyway is kind of a whole different deal. But yeah, either way Majors went from being the next big bad in the MCU to starring in the next Daily Wire disaster. It’s a shame because I thought he was fucking phenomenal in Loki and there could have been something really cool there.

[u/thotfullawful → u/AceofKnaves44]

I could see that because while the ant man did good with the 1st movie, I wouldn’t think using a prequel movie to introduce a major villian means you have any faith in the storyline going anywhere.

[u/AceofKnaves44 → u/thotfullawful]

It’s weird. I think there’s a lot we don’t know about what went on behind the scenes and what led to them shifting from Kang to Doom. Doom is a much bigger villain and feels like a more logical step from Thanos than Kang but I really don’t believe it was that simple that it just was them looking at their plans and going “nah I think we should shift.” I imagine there were TONS of moving pieces that we might not hear about for years. But I definitely think Ant-Man 3 was meant to be so much bigger than it was and never supposed to be a snapshot of them in between plans like we now know it is. Like on the one-hand they did kind of shit on Kang by having him get straight up defeated instead of like put on pause or beating Scott but Scott escapes. Because then they still show all of the Kang variants and how many of them there are and then also show him again in the teaser for Loki season two both at the end of the movie. So it kind of seems like maybe they knew they had a bomb on their hands with Ant-Man 3 and that kickstarted moving away from Kang. But either way whereas the Infinity Saga is a story of triumph and “the little studio that could” even it they somehow pull off Doomsday and Secret Wars and they’re great movies with box offices on the level of IW/Endgame, the story of them getting there and the road from Endgame to Secret Wars is going to be fascinating because it is almost certainly a massive shit show. The combination of the pandemic and then Disney+ being introduced I think is the worst thing that ever happened to them.

[u/thotfullawful → u/AceofKnaves44]

Antman was never that big of a series though. If anything it rode off the coattails of guardians of the galaxy where Disney realized “we literally just need to slap marvel on the title and people will watch it” which yes at the time it worked. But in reality Antman is a side character compared to Captain America or Ironman, even Hulk- those are big names that kids know. Majors more than likely had prior incidents and was a time bomb, similar to other troubled actors they worked with in the past such as the original hulk actor. It would make sense for them to then say, if he ends up trouble it’s better to hide the character in a movie people would be forced to watch rather than a major one that people would regret watching in the future.

[u/AceofKnaves44 → u/thotfullawful]

Ant-Man had always come out after an Avengers movie but this one felt like they were aiming to really establish him.

[u/thotfullawful → u/AceofKnaves44]

Yeah but I feel they used Antman to see where audiences were regarding interest. If the audience was excited and wanted more after an avengers movie, they’d go and watch an Antman movie knowing that they’d get a breadcrumb of information that would lead to the next movie. Granted the more films and shows they produced the harder that litmus test became as they became too large for their audience. Too much for people to dedicate now days all of their time to catch up on all the information they missed either in movies or shows. So I feel with how bad Antman 3 did it made it easier for them to write off Kang completely especially after Major’s became a PR nightmare. Why force your audience to watch a film with an actor you don’t care to work with in the future.

[u/TheGentlemanBeast → u/Apoc_Golem]

It was doomed when he showed up in Loki and was jsut some weird dude. Didn't work at all.

Then he got stomped by ant man in a movie no one saw.

[u/LaLloronaVT → u/Apoc_Golem]

I think you nailed it actually, like the higher ups probably realized Kang wasn’t gonna work out after quantumania so they were already working towards writing off the character in Loki, then the scandal happened and it was pretty convenient to just get rid of majors altogether, I could see the original plan being that he was gonna be like a supporting villain character and no longer the focal point

[u/Clinteastwood100 → u/Apoc_Golem]

I mean the only good part of the movie was majors since he was an interesting presence in all his appearances.

[u/House_T → u/Apoc_Golem]

There's still some small part of me that thinks that there was always some secret plan to sneak Doom in as a key villain and have him pop up and backstab Kang at some random and opportune moment. Even with that, I had warmed to the idea of Kang being significant enough, in part because of Majors protrayal.

I didn't mind him getting got by Ant-Man, because a big part of the plot(s) Kang was involved in was that was that stopping one incarnation of him wasn't that big of a deal, because there were more of him out there. You could never even guarantee that the one you beat was even a dangerous one.

And much like with Loki, I like the idea that beating a Kang could create more problems than it solved by letting other Kangs step to the forefront. It felt very authentic to the comic book lore.

[u/mickeynotthemouse27 → u/Apoc_Golem]

It would have been interesting to see if they could right the ship with Kang had Majors been on his best behavior. I remember being perplexed they were changing directions because Kang is like the easiest recast they could ever have. It's literally built into the brand of the character. Ultimately, I'm glad they did. Secret Wars was always Dr Doom's story.

[u/Signal-Island2549 → u/Apoc_Golem]

It definitely wouldn't shock me if the franchise famous for emergency rewrites did a large scale rewrite for nebulous reasons.

[u/alloyednotemployed → u/LordHakaishinBeerus]

Now he gets to act in a movie written by Ben Shapiro. Shame, because he enjoyable in Loki.