Believe it or not, 1987’s “Predator” could have been even more badass. Seriously, even with the already macho team-up of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, and Jesse Ventura, there actually was going to be one more person that would have made it even better – Jean-Claude Van Damme. That’s right, JCVD was actually originally cast as the Predator. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, this casting never made it to film, and now Vulture has compiled a list of the reasons why from THR‘s great oral history of the film.
If there’s one thing to note, almost everyone has a different reason why Van Damme was fired from “Predator.” Some say it was because he didn’t want to wear the suit. Others say it was because he wanted his face to be seen, and that they didn’t think a 5-foot 6-inch Predator was going to work. Joel Hynek, visual effects supervisor on the film, said it was because he wanted the Predator to kickbox.
“I was in Joel Silver’s trailer, and he had called for Jean-Claude to come see him. And he comes in the trailer and Joel starts saying, ‘You gotta stop kickboxing!’ — because [Jean-Claude] wanted to kickbox — and he was telling him, ‘Look, the Predator is not a kickboxer.’ And Van Damme was like (Van Damme voice), ‘I must do that; that’s how I see the Predator.’ And Joel said, ‘Well, you’re fired. Get out of here.’ And Van Damme says, ‘Kiss my balls!’ and walks out, and that was the end of that,” Hynek said.
While everyone can agree that Van Damme was a pain in the ass during pre-production, not everything they say is bad. Pretty much everyone says that Van Damme moved like no one else, and could have brought a new type of physicality to the role. He just really liked to kickbox and do the splits, and when you’re hired to play an alien hunter, it’s probably best not to do those things. But hey, he’s JCVD, and we all know what happened after that, he went on to kickbox and split his way to huge paydays.
This behind-the-scenes story will just go down in the history of actors who almost starred in something. As sad as it might be that we never got to see the JCVD Predator alien, the end result was a film that people still love 30 years later.