The $7.5 billion role Amanda Seyfried should never have turned down: “I was wrong”
You can never really tell if a movie is going to be a massive hit, and it can be a huge gamble to take on a certain part if you’re not going to reap a significant reward from it, which was Amanda Seyfried’s dilemma when she turned down a chance to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The actor, who has starred in everything from hit comedies like Mean Girls and Mamma Mia! to dramas like Les Misérables and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return, was offered the chance to appear in a huge Marvel blockbuster, but she feared it was going to be a flop; how wrong she was.
Seyfried was presented with the opportunity to play the role of Gamora in James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, released in 2014, and it soon became a mega-hit, grossing almost $775million and dominating pop culture. Even its score was a huge success, becoming the first soundtrack album consisting of previously released songs to hit number one on the US charts.
With tracks from David Bowie, 10cc, Marvin Gaye, and The Runaways, the record was further proof of the movie’s popularity that year, eliciting surprise at a Marvel soundtrack becoming a particularly sought-after vinyl release.
The role of Gamora was instead played by Zoe Saldaña, who has since come to reprise her role in five other multi-million and even multi-billion dollar movies in the MCU, where, if you simply consider her appearances in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, for example, those alone have a combined box-office gross of almost $5billion.
It’s crazy that these movies have had such a hold over movie-goers over the past few years, but it seems like Seyfried is happy with her decision to turn down a role that would’ve had her painted completely green for every day of shooting, which truly sounds exhausting.
So, while she was concerned that the costume and makeup preparation would take far too long each day, that wasn’t the only worry that Seyfried had, who told The Hollywood Reporter, “I didn’t want to be part of the first Marvel movie that bombed”.
She admitted, “I said, ‘Who wants to see a movie about a talking tree and a raccoon?’ Which is clearly, I was very wrong,” but you can hardly blame her, as, on paper, Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t exactly sound like a glittering success.
While she thought the script was well-written, she just wasn’t sure that it was definitely going to succeed, and that’s a risk she didn’t want to take. “The script was great, it was all based in not wanting to be ‘that guy’,” she explained, adding that “If you are the star of a giant movie like that, and it bombs, Hollywood does not forgive you. I’ve seen that happen to people, and it was a giant, giant fear, and I thought, ‘Is it worth it?’”
It’s probably a good thing that Seyfried turned the role down, thus preventing her from being shackled to the cinematic abomination that is the MCU, but then, I’m sure she would’ve appreciated those large pay cheques; admittedly, who wouldn’t?
