Sometimes, the actors who play the bad guys we love to hate have to pass the role to someone
else. Maybe it’s because of behind-the-scenes drama, or perhaps it’s because of busy schedules.
Here are the real reasons these supervillain actors were replaced.
Frank Gorshin played the quizzing villain the Riddler in the '60s Batman series.
"Riddle me this, crime-fighter! What room can no one enter?"
Gorshin's masked trickster remained one of the most well-loved villains of the series,
and even Mark Hamill named him as one of his influences for his voice work on the Joker.
"His Riddler is like one of my favorite comic book villains of all time. I love Frank Gorshin."
Yet in Batman's second season, Gorshin inexplicably disappeared for two episodes and was replaced
by John Astin, who's best known as Gomez Addams from The Addams Family. They were Astin's
only appearances as the brain-teasing bad guy, and Gorshin eventually returned to the
role.
There are different stories about why the brief hiccup in casting happened. Gorshin's
version was that he had a nightclub appearance commitment he couldn't get out of that conflicted
with the shooting schedule. But Batman producer William Dozier claimed that Gorshin's talent
agency demanded more money for the actor's appearances on the show than its budget could
bear.
Two of Marvel's most vicious rivals are Wolverine and Victor Creed, a.k.a. Sabretooth . Fans
got a tiny piece of that rivalry on the big screen in 2000's X-Men when retired professional
wrestler Tyler Mane played Sabretooth as part of Magneto's Brotherhood. He doesn't say much,
but he gets a couple of good throw-downs with Hugh Jackman's Logan. But when it was time
to give Logan his first solo flick with 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Mane was nowhere
to be seen. Instead, it was Liev Schreiber playing the savage mutant.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, Mane said he didn't get to play Sabretooth
in the prequel because the filmmakers wanted someone who looked more like Jackman. The
wrestler explained,
"The storyline was them rising as brothers, and Liev and Hugh look a lot closer in that
respect, so I understand. I can't say I wasn't disappointed. I'd love to get my claws back
into that role. But that's Hollywood."
Hugo Weaving played the villainous Red Skull in 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger,
but when the character surprised audiences seven years later by showing up in Avengers:
Infinity War, there was another actor under all the prosthetics.
"In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love."
While the accent and the voice may have sounded right, it was actually a skilled impression
by Walking Dead actor Ross Marquand, not Weaving.
Weaving's decision to sit this one out was hardly surprising, since the actor told Collider
in 2012 that he had no intention of reprising the Marvel role. While acknowledging that
he'd signed a multi-picture contract with Marvel, he said he didn't think Marvel would
try to force the matter if he said no. But it turns out that Weaving may have been willing
to return, if Marvel had honored the terms of his contract. He told Time Out in 2020
that Marvel had tried to negotiate a lower rate for Infinity War and its sequel, Avengers:
Endgame, than what was promised in his original contract. As a result, Weaving bowed out,
opening the door for Marquand.
The first actress to play Batman's feline antagonist Catwoman in the '60s TV series
was Julie Newmar, who actually returned to the role in two recent animated features — 2016's
Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders and the following year's Batman vs. Two-Face.
Unfortunately, when it came time to film the 1966 Batman movie with the cast of the TV
show, Newmar was shooting the soon-to-be-abandoned comedy Monsieur Lecoq. She was replaced for
the film by Lee Meriwether, although Newmar continued playing the character on the show.
For Batman's third and final season, Newmar left the series to make the Western Mackenna's
Gold, and actress and singer Eartha Kitt took up the role of Gotham's top cat burglar. Because
Kitt was African-American, it was deemed too controversial at the time for her and Batman
to keep teasing each other, so their romantic connection unfortunately disappeared.
While he never got any acid thrown on him, fans were guessing that a turn as Two-Face
might eventually be in the cards for Billy Dee Williams when he played Harvey Dent in
1989's Batman. In that film, Dent has just become Gotham City's new district attorney,
and hadn't yet suffered the catastrophic injury that would prompt his shift from Batman ally
to supervillain.
"For your dying pleasure, we're serving the very same acid that made us the men we are
today."
However, at the 2017 Wizard World Nashville Comic Con, Williams told fans that his chance
to play Two-Face ended when director Joel Schumacher [SHOO-mah-kuhr] took the reins
from Tim Burton on Batman Forever. Williams explained,
"I had hoped that I would have done Two-Face. But it changed hands before then, and I think
Schumacher got involved, so they took a different direction with that."
However, Williams did eventually get to play Two-Face in a different format. In 2017, he
voiced the iconic villain in The Lego Batman Movie.
The mid-credits scene of 2012's The Avengers briefly introduced movie audiences to Thanos,
but it wasn't until Avengers: Infinity War that the villain finally became the focus
of the main story.
The Thanos we met in The Avengers' mid-credits scene isn't the same guy who plays the Mad
Titan in the rest of the Infinity Saga. True Blood actor Damion Poitier
played Thanos at the end of The Avengers, but there was no drama behind the decision
to replace him in the MCU.
Avengers director Joss Whedon admitted he really wasn't sure exactly what to do with
Thanos after The Avengers, implying there was no real long-term plan when Poitier was
cast. By the time the characters came around again in 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel
had a clearer idea of Thanos' trajectory in the MCU, and Josh Brolin [BRO-lin] was cast
in the role. As Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige put it,
"[Brolin] could be Thanos without any effects. He has that kind of face and that kind of
gravitas."
"I am inevitable."
In 2009, the video game Batman: Arkham Asylum was released and quickly earned the
reputation as one of the best superhero video games ever. One of the game's highlights was
the return of voice actors from the popular Batman: The Animated Series television show,
most notably Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as the Joker.
"Look at all this new security. How's a guy supposed to break out of here?"
Conroy and Hamill would lend their voices to follow-ups like Arkham City, Arkham Knight,
and Arkham VR. But both were missing from the 2013 prequel game Batman: Arkham Origins.
Instead of Hamill, the Clown Prince of Crime was voiced by Troy Baker.
An official reason has never been offered for Hamill's absence from Arkham Origins,
but we know of a couple likely contributing factors. First, while he would eventually
do Joker's voice again for other games, as well as the 2016 animated adaptation Batman:
The Killing Joke, Hamill told IGN in 2012 he had no intention of ever voicing the Joker
again. Second, unlike the first two Arkham games which were developed by Rocksteady,
Arkham Origins was developed by WB Montreal, which reportedly couldn't spare as big of
a budget.
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