10 Movie Roles Obviously Designed For Other Actors
2. Bloodsport, The Suicide Squad (2021) - Will Smith
During interviews in the run-up to the release of this summer's The Suicide Squad, both writer/director James Gunn and star Idris Elba were keen to dismiss rumours that he had been originally hired to replace Will Smith as the new Squad's version of Deadshot.
Since it was a while before Elba's casting was attached to a specific character, the initial assumption was that the part of laconic hitman Floyd Lawton had been recast. Warner Bros were at pains to publicise that this wasn't the case, no doubt to ensure that Smith, the bigger star, remained on the radar to return to the role in a potential threequel.
Rumours swirled again - would Elba be playing the Bronze Tiger, master assassin turned superhero and the Squad's former field leader? In the end, Gunn wrongfooted everyone by introducing his version of DC's Bloodsport, aka Robert DuBois.
The thing is… Elba’s DuBois is Smith's Lawton. They’re both bad-tempered gunmen and reluctant team leaders with sinister metallic full-face masks – and (like Deadshot), Bloodsport even has a daughter who is (like Deadshot) the only good thing in his life (an addition to his character that only exists in Gunn's movie).
Then let’s look at the timeline. Smith announced he would not be returning at the end of February 2019. Gunn’s shooting schedule was set in stone, and Smith was already booked. Elba was announced to be in talks to join the cast a week later. By this time, Gunn had already written several drafts of a script which Warner Bros were reportedly ‘high on’.
It seems obvious that those drafts included Deadshot: producer Peter Safran all but admitted as much in an interview last July.
Recasting the character by scoring man of the moment Idris Elba was a major coup - but then the studio panicked over losing their relationship with Smith, forcing Gunn to rethink on the fly and retool DC also-ran Bloodsport to fit his new leading man into his existing script.
However, given the huge similarities between the characters, it’s less of a rewrite and more of a find/replace.