8 Dream TV Castings That Came True

Every time a piece of media announces a live-action adaptation - be it a book, video game, or comic - the first thing we do is wonder who will play its most iconic characters.

But just think about what it takes for a dream casting to come true. It doesn't matter how unanimously agreed upon the idea is across the web - sometimes, it just doesn't work.

Schedules must line up - so if a star is already busy then they're already out. More than that, both the actor and the showrunners have to want to do it, and must be able to work together effectively.

But when it all comes together it's a beautiful thing, because more often than not, it pays off.

There are a few great examples of this in film (Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury or Zachary Quinto as Spock, for example) but it's even tougher to find in television. However, this list highlights the most exciting and exhilarating fan-castings that eventually became a reality.

For almost a decade, Game of Thrones was the biggest show on television. It was a spectacular dark fantasy with a host of interesting, duplicitous characters. Amongst these was the man who “drank and knew things”: Tyrion Lannister, an outsider from his family, in part due to being born a dwarf.

The books had been around for quite some time when the show was greenlit, and had amassed their own cult following. Most fans were in agreement that there was no better man for Tyrion than Peter Dinklage, an assessment that the showrunners also held. However, they were hesitant to approach him.

Dinklage had just finished work on the fantasy film Prince Caspian, and the actor had a distaste for the genre’s tropes. As he put it:

“In fantasy, everybody speaks in broad strokes. There's no intimacy. There's dragons and big speeches, and there's nothing to hold on to. And for somebody my size, it's f**king death, the opposite of [the activism] I was involved with.”

However, he was friends with the wife of co-writer David Benioff, and decided to read the script for the pilot despite his initial negative reaction. And the rest, as they say, is history.