“This is not going to work”: George Clooney Came to Rescue Sandra Bullock after Robert Downey Jr Failed in $689M Movie
George Clooney has starred in numerous great movies in his career spanning decades. His breakthrough in the film industry came with the 1996 film From Dusk Till Dawn. He gained international recognition with his role as Danny Ocean in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s film series which featured many Hollywood stars such as Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, and Andy Garcia.
George Clooney starred in the 2013 sci-fi film Gravity, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The movie starred Sandra Bullock and Clooney as two astronauts who struggle to return to Earth after their spaceship gets destroyed. The film continues to be one of the best sci-fi movies to date and has won Academy Awards including the ones for Best Director and Best Cinematography. However, Clooney and Bullock were not the ones slated for the movie.
George Clooney Replaced Robert Downey Jr. In Gravity
In The Hollywood Reporter‘s 2014 interview series The Hollywood Masters, director Alfonso Cuarón appeared as the first guest. During the 90-minute interview, in addition to discussing his life and career, the director also revealed why Robert Downey Jr. dropped out of the movie.
Speaking of Downey’s departure from the project, Cuarón told the interviewer hosting The Hollywood’s Masters:
“I think Robert is fantastic if you give him the freedom to completely breathe and improvise and change stuff. [But] we tried one of these technologies and it was not compatible. And, after that, we [had a] week that we pretended as if nothing was happening and then we talked and said, ‘This is not going to work. This is tough.’”
The Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban director went on to say that he did not have a start date for the filming to begin when he talked to the Sherlock Holmes star. This allowed him to continue his search for actors. Thankfully, George Clooney and Sandra Bullock came to his rescue.
Robert Downey Jr. Believes He Was Not Meant To Be In Gravity
Although Robert Downey Jr. might not have gotten into show business as early as George Clooney, both of these actors are great in their own right. Some things just aren’t meant to be and this was exactly what happened to be the case for the Iron Man star and Angelina Jolie, who were originally supposed to star as the lead characters. Angelina Jolie dropped out of the movie much before filming began.
In a radio interview with Howard Stern, the MCU star said:
“Everybody winds up doing what they are supposed to do. Sometimes someone gets in a motorcycle accident, and someone else ends up doing the part, and you say, ‘I couldn’t have imagined anyone else there’. I came on early in the development; Angelina wasn’t even attached to it then.”
Downey reiterated what the director had said earlier about the reason for him turning his back on the project. The actor might have portrayed Iron Man for years but at the time, he was not alright with the heavy use of technology. Luckily for Cuarón, George Clooney came in at the right moment.
Source: The Hollywood’s Masters, Interview with Howard Stern
