10 Deleted Stars That Were Bigger Than The Final Movie

3. Tobey Maguire - Life Of Pi

For Ang Lee's adaptation of Yann Martel's Life Of Pi, a framing device was used to tell what was considered to be an 'unfilmable' novel: author Yann Martel, played in the movie by Rafe Spall, interviews his latest subject about his time spent adrift at sea. The focus, though, was always to remain on Pi (Irrfan Khan/Suraj Sharma). and his travels across a big CGI ocean with a cartoon tiger. In the original version of the film, Martel was played not by Spall, but by Tobey Maguire. Lee mercilessly cut Maguire and re-shot the scenes with Spall, when he decided he wanted the character to be played by someone who was enough of an unknown to not distract the audience from Pi's story, which is a weird kind of compliment to Maguire and pretty much a straight insult to Spall. It wasn't Maguire's first time being removed from a film he was the biggest thing in: he was also completely cut out of 1995's music-shop comedy Empire Records. But seeing as no one saw it, he probably wasn't as bothered.
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Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the dashing young princes. Follow Brogan on twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion: @BroganMorris1