Credit: Far Out / Gage Skidmore / Ned Scott / United Artists

“Wasn’t such a good idea”: the infamous 1956 John Wayne role Channing Tatum isn’t against inheriting

Fri 24 April 2026 16:45, UK

John Wayne was such a singular presence that he never had such a thing as an heir apparent, which didn’t deter Channing Tatum from throwing his hat into the ring anyway, as bizarre as it sounds.

You could make the argument for Clint Eastwood when he first emerged as the new face of the western in the 1960s, but since ‘The Duke’ wrote him an angry letter informing his spiritual successor that he didn’t care for what he was doing with the genre, he evidently wasn’t fond of the comparisons.

Jim Arness had a shot at being the second coming of Wayne, and he was even taken under the icon’s wing as a protégé, only for the Searchers and Rio Bravo frontman to throw him under the bus and sell his contract to television so that he’d play the lead role in Gunsmoke that ‘The Duke’ had already turned down.

The idea of Tatum dreaming of channelling someone like John Wayne is hilarious, based solely on the films the latter hated. He loathed the increase in sex and violence that was taking over his beloved Hollywood in the latter years of his career, so you could only imagine how he’d react to watching the former gyrating in a G-string in a series of Magic Mike flicks.

Tatum didn’t want to be Ethan Edwards, though. He didn’t want to be Rooster Cogburn, either, or John T Chance, or Nathan Brittles. Instead, he had his eyes on the worst part that Wayne ever played in the worst movie he ever made, and the picture that may well have killed him, not to mention an alarming percentage of the cast and crew.

When asked if there was any historical figure he’d always dreamed of playing, Tatum answered honestly and acknowledged that the last time a big-name American actor took the part, it didn’t go so well. “I would actually love to play Genghis Khan,” he revealed. “But John Wayne did that. And it wasn’t such a good idea, I think.”

That would be an understatement, with 1956’s The Conqueror enduring as one of the most laughable miscastings in cinema history. The part of Genghis Khan was originally written with Marlon Brando in mind, which is strange enough, but ‘The Duke’ taking over the part of a Mongolian warlord that had been developed for the legendary method man was almost doomed from the start.

To add real-life injury to the cinematic insult that was the grotesque historical epic, shooting within close proximity to nuclear testing sites saw a high volume of cast and crew members develop various forms of cancer, and many of them passed away, earning it the reputation for being the deadliest film ever made.

Obviously, lightning wouldn’t strike twice in that respect, but as much as it’s a dream role for Tatum, the Alabama-born star is highly unlikely to be offered the opportunity to bring Genghis Khan to life.