10 Actors Completely Cut Out Of Huge Movies
Saruman was cut from The Return of the King, and Christopher Lee was pissed!
It doesn't matter how brilliant the plan for a movie is, how meticulously crafted, or the attention to detail put into it. It could be the most undeniably perfect film on paper, but in the process of bringing the idea to life, without exception, it will change.
This could come in any form, both big changes and relatively minor ones that don't necessarily impact the overall final product too much, and a tough decision that every single filmmaker will have to make is what to cut out and what to keep in. What makes the final cut, and what ends up as nothing more than a deleted scene on a DVD special feature?
It's never an easy decision condemning something to the cutting room floor, and it's why there are so many extended and director cuts ultimately released, but imagine how much harder it is to remove someone from the final cut completely.
The following ten actors turned up and put in hard work for a director, only to have every single one of their scenes scrapped, and from some huge movies. Needless to say, some of the names on this list reacted to the news better than others.
10. Tim Blake Nelson - Dune: Part Two
With his return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe after almost 20 years away, Tim Blake Nelson is gearing up to have a big 2025. He will appear as The Leader in Captain America: Brave New World, marking his first appearance on MCU screens since 2008's The Incredible Hulk, closing off one of the biggest abandoned plotlines in franchise history.
As big as next year will be for the actor, however, 2024 could have been even bigger. Nelson joined the cast of Dune: Part Two in an undisclosed role, but his scenes were ultimately cut from the final edit due to run time.
When a movie adapts any source material, by nature there will be aspects and characters that are left out. In spite of appearing in the first film, and playing a further role through the novels, Stephen McKinley Henderson's Thufir Hawat was never even written into the sequel's script, but Nelson got so far as shooting his scenes before being cut. The actor himself has said that he was heartbroken.
Though it's unclear exactly who Neson was going to play, or how big his role ultimately would have been, Dune: Part Two is all but guaranteed to be one of the biggest movies of the year, and any involvement would have meant a lot. This must have been a real gut punch.