10 Roles Written For Actors That Didn't Play Them
3. Avatar Was Offered To Matt Damon And Jake Gyllenhaal
Say this for James Cameron, he has limitless ambition. So limitless, it's obnoxious enough for him to quote his own film when winning an undeserved best picture award, cheat on Kathryn Bigelow and explore the actual wreckage of the Titanic so many times there's a part of you that hopes he will perish in a decompression accident.
As for plot and storytelling, he's either busy re-fighting the Vietnam war in space (or in Vietnam, post-war) or retelling stories with better special effects. For his Pocahontas-In-Space epic Avatar, Fox knew they had a blockbuster on their hands. They probably weren't aware he had 5 films planned in the series at the time, but Cameron always meant money to the studio, so they wanted to pile on an extra bundle by throwing in a big name to go along with the project.
Their first choices, however, didn't seem that interested. Matt Damon and Jake Gyllenhaal were offered the part, but Cameron - a man so adamant about his decisions that he once broke into the studio to re-edit a cut of the first film he from which he was fired, Piranha II: The Spawning - wanted to go with the lesser-known (and talented) Sam Worthington.
This goes down as one of Cameron's wiser, less expensive or illegal choices, as Damon or Gyllenhaal's face under all that blue would have been distracting.