10 WORST Actor Replacements In Movies
Weaving, Connery, Furlong - sometimes it's impossible to step out of the last guy's shadow.
Franchise building has been big money in mainstream cinema for a long time, but the farther we get into this century the more sequels, prequels, reboots, and requels seem to spring up. This is all good and well when the best actor for the job is on a five-film contract that they'd have to kill their firstborn to get out of, but it hasn't always been like this.
There have been plenty of franchises that have come to make another installment and found that the talent has already jumped ship. Far from sinking the whole enterprise, however, this usually causes directors and producers to pivot to another choice, recasting the role and hoping the audience doesn't notice.
Well, sometimes we do. Agent Smith or 007, John Connor or George of the Jungle; sometimes the original is truly irreplaceable, sometimes the replacement isn't up to scratch and sometimes the casting manager has gone rogue.
Whether replacing icons or just not really understanding the part in question, the following ten actors found themselves being the worst replacement for characters in some pretty major film franchises.
10. George McFly - Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Back to the Future Part II took audiences to the actual future for the first time in the series, sling-shotting Marty (Michael J Fox), Doc (Christopher Lloyd), and the DeLorean forward into the space-age world of, uhh, 2015... Shenanigans abound as the pair attempt to prevent both Marty's son (also played by Fox) from sabotaging the McFly family's future, and bully extraordinaire Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) from altering their history, culminating in a wacky return to 1955.
While the film is fun enough, the production and release were laden with almost as much controversy as the first movie (which saw the mid-filming firing of original Marty, Eric Stoltz), thanks to producers' unwise decision to replace Crispin Glover's George McFly with another actor (Jeffrey Weissman) wearing a face mould of Glover taken during the filming of the first Back to the Future. A major lawsuit trailed Part II upon its release, with a reported $760,000 pay-out for Glover.
Weissman, while not a bad actor, is not a good likeness for Crispin Glover and couldn't exactly play well through some creepy prosthetics while also being side-lined to make up for the switcheroo. Still, all this could have been avoided simply by paying Glover the initially rather high sum of $1 million he demanded to return to the role.