The Sean Penn role almost played by Jodie Foster: “We ended up not doing that”
David Fincher has worked with some of the greatest actors of all time. His first film, the much-derided Alien3, features Lance Henriksen, Charles Dance, and, of course, Sigourney Weaver. Since then, he has worked with everyone from Brad Pitt to Rosamund Pike, Morgan Freeman to Jodie Foster.
It’s an impressive list of famous friends, but there are some stars who actually turned down a chance to work with the three-time ‘Best Director’ nominee.
Denzel Washington said no to the role of Detective William Somerset in Se7en, as did Sylvester Stallone. Jonah Hill was in the running for Justin Timberlake’s part in The Social Network, and then there are the slew of big stars who have worked with the noted perfectionist once and have sworn never to do so again. Then there’s the aforementioned Foster, of whom Fincher admitted to being a “huge” fan in an interview with Musicolog. This was ahead of the release of Panic Room, which stars Foster, but the two could have collaborated a lot sooner had things gone to plan.
“We were going to do The Game and rewrite it for her,” the director explained. “That was to be the Sean Penn part. We ended up not doing that for reasons that are too complicated to go into.” The Game, released in 1997, is about an investment banker (Michael Douglas) whose life becomes overtaken by a mysterious competition with far-reaching consequences for the rest of the world. He becomes embroiled in the game after receiving a gift from his brother, the character played by Sean Penn.
Foster and Penn are about as far apart as you can possibly get, so it seems a little unlikely that they were once destined for the same role. However, the clues are there. Penn’s character in The Game is called Conrad Van Orton, but he goes by the nickname ‘Connie’. It seems like this gender-neutral moniker was assigned on the off-chance that Foster did pick up the role.
Fincher went on to explain how, after missing out on her five years earlier, he managed to tie Foster down for Panic Room. “I never thought of her for this because she was busy [directing] Flora Plum,” he recounted. “We cast Kristen Stewart, and she reminded me of a young Jodie Foster. She has that sort of great droll sense of humour. When Nicole [Kidman] hurt herself, we thought we were going to shut the movie down and get an insurance claim. A [producer] told me that Jodie’s movie fell apart, and it was like let’s send her the script!”
Kidman had originally been slated to play Meg Altman, a woman caught in a home invasion with her young daughter (Stewart). However, an old knee injury flared up, so she was forced to leave the project. In a strange coincidence, an injury to Russell Crowe on the set of Flora Plum shelved that idea and left Foster free to star in Panic Room. We’re not saying Fincher and Foster intentionally sabotaged each other’s films so they could work together, but…
Considering how great she is in Panic Room, it’s probably for the best that Foster missed out on The Game. Still, you can’t help but wonder what that film would have looked like if she’d have been in it.
