With all the talk of multiverses in superhero films, that sort of logic sometimes seeps into my own brain when I think of what could have been regarding casting on films. For example, in our Earth (which is Earth-Prime), Matt Damon was cast in “The Martian” and would end up earning an Oscar nomination for his role in the Ridley Scott sci-fi film. But on Earth-2, there might exist another version of “The Martian” with a very, very different actor in the leading role.
Speaking to CinemaBlend, the author of the novel “The Martian,” Andy Weir, talked about the casting choice to go with Matt Damon in the lead role of Mark Watney, the botanist that would survive on Mars for an extended period of time trying to wait for rescue after being abandoned. While everyone involved in the production seemed really excited about the possibility of Matt Damon in the lead role, apparently, the studio (20th Century Fox) was thinking “The Martian” could be a good vehicle for Channing Tatum.
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“Well, when Matt Damon threw his hat in the ring, we were like, ‘Oh hell yeah,’” explained Weir. “Bear in mind, in ‘The Martian’ I had no say whatsoever. My only job was to cash the check. The producers and Ridley were like, ‘Oh hell yeah. That works.’ But the studio was really pushing to have Channing Tatum play the lead. And I was like, ‘I don’t see that. He’s an absolutely gorgeous man, but I don’t see him being this really really smart guy.’”
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He continued, “I’m sure the real Channing Tatum is plenty intelligent, but that’s not the kind of character he usually plays. He usually plays either a guy who’s gorgeous, or a guy who’s a badass, or both. But yeah, we got Matt, and Matt did such a fantastic job. He nailed it.”
While Tatum has proven himself to be a pretty solid actor in a number of films, you can’t deny how strange it would have been to see him in “The Martian.” Even someone like Damon was almost too much of an A-list hunk to be believable as a science nerd stuck on Mars. Tatum might have been a bridge too far.
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Alas, we live on Earth-Prime, and we saw the Oscar-nominated version with Damon in the leading role. Makes you wonder what happened on Earth-2, right? Did Tatum land an Oscar for his performance? Until we get that multiversal transportation to let us visit other realities, we’re stuck never knowing the answer.