15 Strangest Movie Casting Rumours That Thankfully Never Happened

4. O.J. Simpson As The Terminator

The Terminator and its sequel Terminator 2: Judgement Day were the movies that lunched the acting career of ex-bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger into the stratosphere. The decision to cast the musclebound robot-voiced Austrian as the titular killer robot is a clear no brainer, but in truth Schwarzenegger was first offered the role of Kyle Reese that eventually went to Michael Biehn. The man envisioned as The Terminator? That was O.J. Simpson. Obviously. The convicted burglar and not-convicted-of-other-things Simpson had retired from the NFL when The Terminator was in production and had already launched a modest acting career with roles in The Towering Inferno and Capricorn One. He was the man the head of Orion Pictures Mike Medavoy wanted to star in James Cameron's sci-fi actioner. This one didn't get much beyond the idea stage, thankfully, with James Cameron unconvinced by Simpson's ability to play the bad guy, describing him as a "likeable, goofy, kind of innocent guy". Picturing Simpson in those terms is hard to do now, but back then Cameron was right. In fact his words describe exactly Simpson's performance as a bumbling, clumsy detective in The Naked Gun franchise. Watch those films and then try to picture Simpson as a remorseless killer robot. It simply would have been a bad fit. Still, it's kind of ironic that O.J. Simpson missed out on the part because he wasn't believable as a killer.