Wonder Woman had failed to get a real solo movie for 75 years before Gal Gadot put on the armor in 2017. Warner Bros. cast her off a resume full of Fast and Furious sequels, which is exactly what made people doubt her. The film made over 800 million dollars worldwide and Patty Jenkins became the first woman to direct a studio superhero movie. Gadot's Israeli military background got mocked in pre release chatter and then never came up again once audiences saw the fight choreography. | © Warner Bros.
Oswald Cobblepot needed to be ugly, cruel, and somehow still magnetic enough to carry his own scenes in The Batman. Colin Farrell buried under prosthetics for hours a day was the last image fans wanted after years of imagining a leaner, meaner Penguin. Matt Reeves cast him anyway in 2022, and the transformation was so complete that some viewers didn't clock it was Farrell until the credits. He got his own HBO spinoff series out of it, which is not what usually happens to a role people called miscast. | © Warner Bros.
Andrew Garfield replaced Tobey Maguire in 2012, only three years after Maguire's trilogy had ended, which is not a lot of time for anyone to want a new Peter Parker. Sony rebooted the franchise anyway, and The Amazing Spider-Man made over 700 million dollars despite reviews calling the timing cynical. Garfield's version leaned into teenage awkwardness in a way Maguire's never did, and that choice split people right down the middle. Two movies in, Sony scrapped the whole series and folded Spider-Man into the MCU instead, which settled less than people think. | © Sony Pictures
Aaron Sorkin wrote Mark Zuckerberg as a man who talks faster than everyone else in the room, and Jesse Eisenberg had built a whole career playing nervous. The real Zuckerberg called the 2010 film "fiction" and said it got his shirts wrong, let alone his personality. Eisenberg never met him before shooting and didn't try to. He earned an Oscar nomination for The Social Network anyway, playing a version of the man Facebook itself refused to endorse. | © Columbia Pictures
Matt Damon is five foot ten, and Robert Ludlum's original Jason Bourne novels describe a much larger, harder man. Universal cast him anyway in 2002, right as the spy genre was still worshipping Pierce Brosnan's tailored calm. The Bourne Identity made close to $215 million worldwide against a $60 million budget, then kept going for four more films. Nobody brings up his height anymore, they bring up the fight in the kitchen. | © Universal Pictures
Bryan Cranston spent seven seasons as the goofy dad on Malcolm in the Middle before Vince Gilligan offered him the role of Walter White in 2008. AMC executives reportedly worried a comedy actor couldn't carry a drama about a dying chemistry teacher turned meth cook. Cranston won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor three years running, 2008 through 2010. Breaking Bad ended in 2013 as one of the highest rated finales in cable history, and the doubt about him aged out of the conversation entirely. | © AMC
Hugh Jackman was 31 in 1999, Australian, and mostly unknown to American audiences when Bryan Singer needed a Wolverine for X-Men. Dougray Scott had the part first and dropped out over Mission: Impossible II scheduling conflicts, handing it to Jackman weeks before filming. Wolverine in the comics stands 5'3", and Jackman is 6'2", a gap fans pointed out immediately in 2000. He played the character in nine films across seventeen years, ending with Logan in 2017, and nobody was still measuring him by then. | © 20th Century Fox
Fans launched an actual petition to get Ben Affleck removed from Batman v Superman before a single frame had screened. The hashtag was #NotMyBatman, and it trended for days in 2013. Then Batman v Superman opened in 2016, Affleck's Bruce Wayne showed up bruised and middle-aged and genuinely violent, and the warehouse fight became the scene people pointed to when they walked the complaints back. He still left the role early, but not because the performance was the problem. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Iron Man almost went to Tom Cruise, and Marvel's own financiers pushed back hard on Robert Downey Jr. because of his history with addiction and arrests. Jon Favreau fought the studio to cast him anyway in 2008. Downey improvised large chunks of Tony Stark's dialogue, including most of the workshop scenes. That gamble turned into a franchise built around one actor's specific, unrepeatable rhythm. | © Paramount Pictures / Marvel Studios
British tabloids ran the phrase "not Bond enough" the day Daniel Craig's casting leaked in 2005, and one paper printed his face over a martini glass with a question mark. He was blond, which apparently mattered to people, and he'd never played suave before. Casino Royale opened in 2006 with a foot chase and a torture scene that left Bond bleeding and human. Twenty one movies in, nobody had shown that side of the character on screen before. | © Sony Pictures / MGM
Heath Ledger's casting as the Joker got mocked online in 2007 before anyone had seen a single trailer, mostly by people who only knew him from A Knight's Tale. He spent weeks alone in a hotel room building the character's voice and mannerisms in a journal. The Dark Knight opened in July 2008, one month before he died. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor posthumously in 2009, and the mockery had already gone quiet long before that. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Warner Bros. received something close to fifty thousand letters of protest after announcing Michael Keaton for Batman in 1988. He was known for Beetlejuice and Mr. Mom, comedies, nothing close to a brooding vigilante. Tim Burton cast him anyway, betting on stillness over muscle. Batman opened in June 1989 and made over 400 million dollars worldwide, and the fifty thousand letters never got a sequel. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Fans revolted when these actors were cast, only to eat their words once the movie actually came out. Here are 15 casting choices that were hated at the time and proved everyone wrong.
