10 Actors Who Avoided Awful Movies Due To "Scheduling Conflicts"
4. Johnny Depp - Oz: The Great And Powerful/The Lone Ranger
Both Johnny Depp and Robert Downey Jr. were originally approached for the role of a young wizard of Oz before James Franco was eventually cast.
While Downey Jr. was straight-up not interested in the role after a meeting with director Sam Raimi failed to come to an agreement, Depp was reported to like the part but couldn’t commit due to his role in Disney’s other live-action venture The Lone Ranger.
Both of those films ended up being critically mixed-to-negative, but Oz: The Great and Powerful at least earned $493 million against a $200 million budget while The Lone Ranger made $260 million on a $250 million production budget, estimated to have lost the studio between $160-190 million in total. Depp perhaps made the wrong choice here.