The 2007 role Gerard Butler would only be cast in if he quit smoking: “Are you serious?”
There are certain facts that, even though you know they’re true, can seem too far-fetched to be realistic, and one of those things is that in 2004, Gerard Butler appeared in the lead in a big-budget film version of The Phantom of the Opera.
Now I have absolutely no recollection of this happening at all, and I feel like I’m being gaslighted because not only was it not an enormous flop, as it surely should have been, but it actually brought in $150 million at the box office, earned three Oscar nominations, and Joel Schumacher directed it! Is there a less likely Phantom than gravelly-voiced action hero Gerard Butler?
Well, all of this did indeed transpire back when Butler was in his pre-300 career, before the graphic comic book adaptation catapulted him into the big leagues, allowing him to do other strange things like the absolutely dire 2007 rom-com PS I Love You, which is one of the worst things committed to film, worse than JFK getting shot.
That said, his turn in Phantom was good enough that one studio head at Warner Bros, Alan Horn, did consider him for the bloodthirsty Zack Snyder movie about Spartans at war, but he certainly had concerns that Butler wasn’t the right actor.
The Scot facilitated a meeting between the two, as Horn told The Hollywood Reporter, “To me, he was the Phantom… He calls me, and he says, ‘Can I come and see ya?’. So he comes to see me, and he’s really physically imposing.”
While his size and bulk helped matters, one of Butler’s personal habits didn’t. “I knew from Phantom that he smoked, and I thought I smelled it on him,” Horn explained. “So I said, ‘OK, you can have the part on one condition: You have got to stop smoking’. He said, ‘Are you serious?’ I said, ‘Yes. Give me your word, and it’s yours’. And he said, ‘I give you my word’.”
This would have made sense to some degree, because they didn’t have Marlboro Golds in ancient Greece, but it seems Horn’s request stemmed from a personal dislike of smoking, rather than the fact that it wouldn’t have been historically accurate to have King Leonidas asking anyone if they’ve got a light after mercilessly mowing through some Persian soldiers.
Butler did, of course, get the part, but he absolutely did not keep his promise to Horn, and carried on puffing away for another two decades, which, to be fair, is much more in keeping with his general gritty action hero persona, as witnessed in the two superb, and much overlooked, thrillers Den of Thieves that he’s made over the last five years.
Aside from his work on the How to Train Your Dragon reboot last year, Butler has recently stuck to what he’s good at, and long may it continue. Another action thriller, 2023’s Plane, was excellent and has a sequel on the way, and he got good reviews for Greenland 2 as well. He’s also set for a movie called The Nest about an elite sniper trying to stop the World Cup from taking place, although, thankfully, it won’t be ready for this year’s edition, because that would cause all kinds of problems.
