10 Recent Movie Castings That Had No Right To Be This Good
5. Austin Butler As Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen - Dune Part II
Just like Ariana Grande, Austin Butler, too, first found fame as a child star on Nickelodeon, and also just like Ariana Grande, years later eyebrows were raised when he was cast in a huge blockbuster. Rather than Wicked, this was Butler's turn as Feyd-Rautha in Dune Part II.
Denis Villeneuve's Dune was huge when it released, and with the sequel came impressive additions to the already stacked cast, with the likes of Florence Pugh, Christopher Walken, and Anya Taylor-Joy joining the fray. Another new face was Austin Butler, though you may not have recognised it by the time he appeared in 2024.
There's no getting around it, Butler is a handsome, charismatic guy, something that has always been understandably leaned into for the majority of his film roles, and something that you would have thought may have rendered him unsuitable for such a villainous brute. However, this is exactly why Villeneuve looked to cast him.
Reaching a place that he had not been to before, Butler turned in a truly unsettling performance as the remorseless and merciless villain in the Dune sequel, though no one but the director likely appreciated how important his sex appeal was to the role beforehand.