Austin Butler reveals failed audition for hit movie franchise: “I don’t even think I got a call back”
Following the path walked by many before him, Austin Butler is among the latest crop of former Disney favourites to become mainstream superstars, with the actor marking himself out as having the potential to be remembered as one of his generation’s top talents.
Britney Spears, Ryan Gosling, Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus, Zendaya, Selena Gomez, and Zac Efron are just a sampling of the others to have evolved from Mouse House stalwarts to fixtures of the pop culture consciousness, with the Academy Award-nominated Elvis star currently in the midst of an impressive hot streak.
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Baz Luhrmann’s biopic of ‘The King’, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, and Ari Aster’s upcoming Eddington have propelled Butler towards the A-list. However, it could have happened a decade ago if his audition for what would become a multi-billion dollar franchise had gone a little better.
“I auditioned for The Hunger Games and I didn’t get it at all,” he said to Buzzfeed. “I don’t even think I got a call back, what’s the character, Peeta? Josh Hutcherson got that, he’s great.” The four-film series headlined by Jennifer Lawrence ended up earning almost $3 billion at the box office, so Butler definitely missed out on a lucrative payday.
Not that he seems mad about it, though, and his time came eventually once he began working his own way up the Hollywood ladder. Alexander Ludwig, Lucas Till, and Evan Peters were other unsuccessful actors to audition for the same part, and they’ve all done alright for themselves, too.
He probably wasn’t right for the part anyway, with Hutcherson’s Peeta intended to be the opposite of Liam Hemsworth’s Gale in many ways as they end up embroiled in a love triangle with Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss. The latter and Butler are both tall, blonde, and dazzlingly handsome chaps, so they would have been a touch too similar were they to serve as two points on The Hunger Games‘ romantic isosceles.
Despite his meteoric rise to fame, Butler still only has 11 feature-length credits to his name, and one of them was sent straight to home video without seeing the inside of a cinema screen. The 32-year-old has his entire career in front of him, and he’s shown more than enough already to indicate that he won’t be left ruing the day he bungled his shot at the smash hit dystopian saga.
In a two-and-a-half star review of The Bikeriders, Far Out wrote: “There’s the odd direct reference to the great biking movies of the past, Easy Rider and The Wild One, the latter of which Johnny is inspired to begin the Vandals in the first place. However, it is relatively straightforward to see that the movie referring to them pales in comparison concerning quality.”
Concluding: “The Bikeriders pays its respects to the Harley Davidson and the late-night outdoor parties of the 1960s, but unfortunately, it focuses too heavily on its inspiration at the cost of telling its characters’ stories.”
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