I just read Kevin Costner turned down the Andy role in Shawshank for Waterworld

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bad apocalyptic movies

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The Postman.

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It is my opinion that if he would have taken the Shawshank role over the waterworld role he would have been regarded as the GOAT actor of all time.

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But instead of Shawshank he did waterworld which was his worst movie ever. And he has not been the same since. He career took a huge decline after that movie.

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Jim Carrey in Cable Guy thought it RULED!

And ironically Cable Guy is another movie that as much better than all of the hate it got when first released.

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In a retrospective, Vanity Fair wrote that Reiner's initial vision put Tom Cruise in the leading role. Cruise had just come off a massive success with Reiner in the form of Aaron Sorkin's classic courtroom drama A Few Good Men (1992). Cruise even did a table read, but he was unwilling to work under Darabont as it was his first film. Fellow 90s mainstays Tom Hanks and Kevin Costner were offered the role, but passed. Hanks was busy with the lead in Forrest Gump (1994), the film which would beat out Shawshank for Best Picture, among other awards. Costner had the lead in the post-apocalyptic Waterworld (1995) and was therefore unavailable.

After a few more names came and went through Castle Rock Entertainment, Darabont at last turned to Tim Robbins after seeing him in the 1990 psychological horror film Jacob's Ladder. It was Robbins who spurred the hiring of experienced cinematographer Roger Deakins, a sure-footed Gregg Toland to Darabont's green Welles. Deakins would go on to earn an Academy Award nomination for his work on the film, one in a long list of accolades for the legendary DP.

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The original novella describes Red as a white Irishman. In the aforementioned Vanity Fair piece, Darabont is said to have first thought of some of his favorite actors: Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall, who were unavailable for one reason or another. The Daily Beast reported that Harrison Ford, Paul Newman, and Clint Eastwood were considered for the role, Ford being Reiner's initial choice opposite Cruise's Andy Dufresne.

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In the end, Castle Rock producer Liz Glotzer suggested ignoring the novella's characterization outright and casting Morgan Freeman. Deadline reported that Darabont was receptive to the decision, having seen him in Brubaker (1980), and Robbins was excited to work with Freeman after having grown up watching him on The Electric Company. Freeman himself has cited the script as being among the best he'd ever read, and was delighted at the chance to be in the film in any role.

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James Gandolfini passed on the role of Boggs, the violent prison gang leader, and Andy's repeat assaulter. In 1994, Gandolfini had relatively few film credits to his name, but he soon became an icon when he started working in television during the late 90s, most notably as mafioso Tony Soprano in the eponymous HBO series. Instead, the role went to character actor Mark Rolston, a veteran of several genre films including Aliens (1986) and Lethal Weapon 2 (1989).

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A young Brad Pitt nearly played inmate Tommy Williams, himself another character that was the beneficiary of Darabont's retooling of the original novella. In the book, Tommy exchanges evidence that would free Andy to the Warden for a transfer to a nicer prison, but Darabont ups the ante of Norton's villainy and introduces some cinematic violence into the story by riddling the kid with bullets at Norton's direction. In a USA Today piece, Pitt remarked he has no regrets about passing on the project, and Darabont was happy with Gil Bellows' debut in the role.

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