Films they got the wrong lead actor?

Diamonds Are Forever.
Preferred if George Lazenby had played Bond.

 

Stardust ( 2021)
Bowie biopic.
Johnny Flynn looking more like Rhys Ifans.

 

Wasn't this done very recently?

Anyways, Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher.

 

Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison.

Should have got Harry Hamlin, but then they would have had to make the film 10-20 years earlier.

 

Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon.

Should have been Nick Cage.

 

Nah, Sean was still perfect for it. You could see the shift though to the tone of the Moore films here.

 

DAF-Sean ?

He had more hair on his eyebrows than on his head.

 

Mickey Rourke instead of Tom Cruise in Rain Man.

Martin Sheen instead of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Sissy Spacek instead of Shelley Duvall.

 

No.

Hell no.

 

Shining?
That would have worked.
Sheen was good in The Twilight Zone.

 

just about anyone else in any role johnny depp has ever had.

he ruins every movie he is in.

who on earth thought this guy could act back in the day?

 

Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker's Dracula. It wasn't a very good film in general, but Keanu's terrible British accent and stiff acting stuck out like a sore thumb.

 

Daniel Gillies should've played Venom in Spider-Man 3. He was in Spider-Man 2 as John Jameson, JJJ's astronaut son who Mary Jane leaves at the alter. In Spider-Man 3, they could've sent him into space where he brings back the Venom symbiote. He already has a built-in reason to hate Peter Parker and Spider-Man because of jealousy over MJ and his father egging him on with Spider-Man hatred. The John Jameson character actually became a different villain early in the Spider-Man comic books as a result of some spores he picked up in space. So Venom in Spider-Man 3 could've merged these two different comic book villains into one that worked well for the movie.

Is this an ironic statement based on the fact that Mickey Rourke played the disabled man in a TV movie written by the writer of Rain Man?

Bill (1981 film) - Wikipedia

 

David Carradine in Bergman's The Serpent's egg. Should've been Bowie

 

Anything featuring Mark Wahlberg.

 

True Grit (the original) should have had Elvis Presley and Sally Fields.

EDIT: Sorry, I see you said lead. I'm leaving my answer here anyway.

 

Jack Palance in The Big Knife.

 

David Carradine in Bound For Glory

WTAF?!

 

I was convinced back in 1995, Tom Cruise buying his way into the Mission: Impossible film project, was going to ruin a wonderful thing. It's not like they needed his vanity to secure funding for a no-brainer franchise already in the making.

He has since proved me incorrect.

 

David Carradine in "Kung Fu".

 

I read Rourke turned Rain Man down. Never heard of Bill before.

 

Oh, wait, that was Mickey Rooney who played Bill.

Nevermind.

 

Famously, the rehearsals reportedly started with Tom Cruise as the mentally-challenged brother, and Dustin Hoffman as the nefarious "other" brother. They had previously cast Bill Murray as Rain Man, but he dropped out a few weeks before production started. Eventually they realized that Cruise was better as the ne'er-do-well brother, and Hoffman was better as Rain Man. All things considered, I think it wound up as a terrific movie: nominated for 8 Oscars, won 4, made $325 on a budget of $25M... that's a massive success by any measure.

 

Ironically 25 years later MI ( franchise)seems to be his box office money spinner.

 

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Connery instead of Lazenby. Or The Tin Man, because he would still be better than the Wooden Man Lazenby was.