10 Actors Who Just Quit Huge Movies
These actors won't be starring in these massive films.
Even the "simplest" movie is a hugely complex beast with a ton of moving parts behind the scenes that we as mere moviegoers just aren't aware of.
And even the seemingly basic act of hiring an actor for a role and then getting them in front of cameras can be a huge Ordeal, because there are so many things that can cause an actor to pull out before shooting starts.
Scheduling conflicts are of course the most common reason, as this list will testify, though it's also worth noting that this is an easy all-catch explanation when actors want to exit a project for another reason without ruffling any feathers, so take it with a pinch of salt.
Yet no matter what the real reason was, these 10 actors all just quit huge movies, from superhero tentpoles to films being directed by some of the most successful filmmakers of all time, and everything else in between.
Time will tell whether their departure was a smart decision, or whether they might regret walking away from a film that's a huge, even career-defining success for those who replaced them...
10. Paul Mescal - The Dog Stars
Providing yet further proof that Ridley Scott apparently doesn't sleep, the 87-year-old filmmaker is due to shoot two new movies this year - the Bee Gees biopic You Should Be Dancing and, before that, an adaptation of Peter Heller's 2012 post-apocalyptic novel The Dog Stars.
Scott's Gladiator II star Paul Mescal was originally announced to be playing the lead role in the former, of a man who seeks out the source of a mysterious transmission in the wake of a world-ravaging pandemic.
However, last December Scott himself seemed well aware that Mescal would likely end up departing the project, noting that the actor was plenty busy preparing to play Paul McCartney in Sam Mendes' upcoming four-film Beatles biopic saga.
And indeed, by early January Mescal had taken leave of The Dog Stars, with another hot up-and-coming actor, Jacob Elordi, swiftly being drafted in to take the part.
Elordi's certainly a solid replacement, and given that he just finished working on Emerald Fennell's new Wuthering Heights adaptation, his schedule seems to have cleared just in time to start shooting with Scott in the coming weeks.