Kurt Angle was supposed to be the lead star in Michael Bay movie ‘Pearl Habor’
Having built an impressive resume of countless music videos where he worked alongside such names as Donny Osmond, Vanilla Ice, Tina Turner and Meat Loaf, filmmaker Michael Bay finally made his first feature film in 1995 with Bad Boys. This sparked the director’s infamous interest in explosions and scantily-clad models, working with Will Smith, Martin Lawrence and Lisa Boyle in his celebrated debut.
Bay’s identity as a filmmaker was built from this debut, making the James Bond knock-off The Rock shortly after in 1996, where he collaborated with Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris, before creating the popular disaster movie Armageddon with Ben Affleck, Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi, Owen Wilson and Liv Tyler in 1998. Inspired by one particular cinematic classic, however, the director tried to shake his action-orientated focus at the dawn of the new millennium, releasing Pearl Harbor in an attempt to gain some critical acclaim.
Not quite beloved by critics, the film still became a commercial hit, taking great box-office returns whilst winning an Academy Award in 2002 for Best Sound Editing. Starring Ben Affleck, Jon Voight, Michael Shannon, Alec Baldwin, Jaime King and Kate Beckinsale, the film was a historical drama that forced a tale of romance into the mix, following two lifelong friends and a nurse who becomes caught up in a defining moment of WWII.
In addition to Affleck as Rafe and Beckinsale as Evelyn, the third member of the love triangle was Josh Hartnett’s Danny, an actor who almost didn’t make it to the production after a WWE star was initially favoured in his role. The unlucky wrestling star who only narrowly missed out on appearing in the movie was Kurt Angle, who only escaped the grasp of Michael Bay thanks to the CEO of WWE, Vince McMahon.
Speaking about the experience, Angle told Wrestling News, “It was a blockbuster movie. I was one of the leading roles. They wanted me and WWE said no. It was Pearl Harbor”.
Explaining a little bit about who he might have played in the movie, he adds, “It was a guy that was the hero that died at the end. I didn’t see the movie, but I was told who it was gonna be”. As for why McMahon prevented him from joining the cast, Angle took the opinion on the chin, telling the website, “I totally get it, Rock just left and Vince was putting everybody on lockdown. He wasn’t going to lose another wrestler to Hollywood”.
Rising to popularity at a surprising pace, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson recently became the highest-paid actor in Hollywood and went on to work with Michael Bay in 2013 for the crime drama Pain & Gain alongside Mark Wahlberg, Ed Harris, Anthony Mackie and Bar Paly.
With McMahon clearly paranoid about the allure of the movie industry, as Angle explains, “For the next several years, five or six years, nobody was allowed to do anything after Rock left. So it was very difficult to get any type of movies because WWE was controlling you and you had to do what they told you to do. But eventually, thank God, you know, it loosened up and then John Cena and Edge started getting movie roles, Batista, and everything started opening up”.
