Tom Cruise As John Carter? True Story Behind Actor’s Push For 2012 Movie

Tom Cruise once campaigned for the starring role in Disney’s infamous live-action flop John Carter. The Mission Impossible star would have played the titular character, a soldier of the Confederate army during the American Civil War who was whisked away to Mars to find himself thrust in the middle of a different war between rival factions for the alien planet’s natural resources. Released in 2012, the CGI-extravaganza proved to be a colossal box office bomb resulting the cancellation of a planned trilogy.

John Carter is based on the novel A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first in a series of eleven. Since the 1930s, there have been multiple attempts at adapting the Martian adventure to the big screen. In 1990, Die Hard director John McTiernan led the futile push with Back to the Future‘s Bob Gale writing who was later replaced by Sam Resnick in 1992. At that time Tom Cruise lobbied to play the lead role with Julia Roberts as the Princess of Mars, Dejah Thoris. Soon this production fell through as did subsequent attempts with Robert Rodriguez and Jon Favreau. In 2008, Finding Nemo and Wall-E director Andrew Stanton took the reins of the latest effort which proved to be the most fruitful.

The Wrap reports that Tom Cruise campaigned hard for the role of John Carter in the 2012 film of the same name. Although director Andrew Stanton had other actors on his short list for the part, he had discussions with the Oblivion star. Regardless of Cruise’s interest, Stanton already had his mind made up on the eventual lead of the film, Taylor Kitsch.

“I had Taylor already in mind by the time Tom made his interest known. Tom had a long history with the material, so it wasn’t too surprising to discover he still had interest in it. He was a consummate professional in his discussions with me about the role, and beyond respectful to the fact I was already on an audition path with Taylor…We agreed to talk further if I were to pass on Taylor, but I obviously didn’t. It was as simple and non-controversial as that.”

John Carter‘s Princess of Mars Lynn Collins remembers Tom Cruise’s bid for the role saying that she never truly believed he was in the running, stating, “he may have thought he was in the mix, and I think him and Andrew had some conversations, but I don’t think he was ever actually in the mix so to speak.” Collins also noted that there was a great age disparity between Tom Cruise and all of the other actors the studio were testing for the part, “the people that they were considering…were all 20 years younger than him.” The actress ended up never testing with Cruise despite having screen tests with other prominent actors including the eventual lead Taylor Kitsch.

Released in early 2012 with the hopes of becoming a box office smash, the film ended up being a colossal failure, earning $284.1 million worldwide with a massive $350 million combined production and marketing budget. Although the initial reviews were generally mixed, favoring the spectacle and pulpy feel but criticizing its convoluted story and poor pacing, the sci-fi adventure has developed a cult following over time. If Tom Cruise were cast in the film as an older version of John Carter, there would be no doubt that the mega star would thrust himself into the action, pushing the scale of the set pieces as he has in the past with the Mission Impossible franchise and is planning to do with a film shot in space. John Carter can be currently streamed on Disney +.

Next: John Carter: Everything That Went Wrong With Disney’s Movie

Source: The Wrap

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