John Travolta once lost $17 million for skipping out on a film.

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JCVD was initially cast because of his martial arts prowess, but when he arrived on set in the Mexican jungle, he wasn't able to complete the stunts due to the bulky suit. “My head was in the neck. My hands were in the forearms, and there were cables [attached to my fingers to move the creature’s head and jaws]. My feet were in his calves, so I was on [stilts]. It was a disgusting outfit,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. After being asked to do an impossible stunt by the producers, JCVD quit, and the predator suit was given a complete makeover to emphasize the creature's height rather than speed. Kevin Peter Hall, who towered at 7'2" was hired to replace JCVD, who was only 5'10".

“I had [Purefoy] in the mask for the first two weeks of filming, and it wasn’t working out,” the film's director James McTeigue told IndieWire. “It happened over an Easter break as I remember, and I could sort of feel it coming. I think James wasn’t really feeling it, so we made the decision. It was difficult at the time, but we made the best decision.” McTeigue then called in Hugo Weaving, with whom he'd previously worked on The Matrix films. “[Hugo] had done a lot of mask work at drama school. Noh theater, kabuki, and Greek tragedy,” McTeigue continued. “He came into it, and he wasn’t afraid of the mask. He was like, ‘This is going to be completely freeing.’”

In order to make Ebsen's face appear to be made of tin, the makeup team applied a base layer of white paint and then dusted aluminium particles over top. Unfortunately, after 10 days of repeated dustings, Ebsen was rushed to the hospital because the aluminum had coated his lungs to the point he couldn't breathe.  "I was in the hospital under an oxygen tent for two weeks, and went from there to the Coronado Hotel in San Diego to recuperate. MGM had to get on with the picture and gave the role to Jack Haley. I spent a month at the Coronado and finally felt well enough to go home,” Ebsen said. Ironically, Ebsen was originally cast as the Scarecrow, but swapped roles with Ray Bolger right before filming.

Remar, who you may know as Dexter's father on Dexter, left several weeks into filming the Alien sequel. While the real reason was not reported at the time, Remar later admitted his drug addiction was the cause of his exit from the project. Remar's time on the Aliens set was a rocky one, as he accidentally fired a round of live ammunition from a prop gun while filming that blew a hole into the neighboring set of The Little Shop of Horrors. 

If you've never heard of The Double, that's because the film was never released. Travolta agreed to shoot the adaptation of the little-known Fyodor Dostoevsky novel in 1996. According to reports, Travolta and Polanski didn't see eye-to-eye on a revised version of the script, prompting Travolta to exit the project days before filming was to begin. Both parties sued each other, with a settlement reached in 2001.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Bette Davis took a week off from filming the dark comedy to get some dental work done, and then never returned, prompting the director Larry Cohen to rework the script so that Davis' witch character transforms herself into Barbara Carrera. Due to complications from the dental surgery, Davis lost weight (going from 88 to 75 pounds according to her) and was worried that audiences seeing her so frail would result in studios refusing to give her roles in the future. Davis, however, died a few months later, making this the last role in her iconic career. 

Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, which involved actually dragging a riverboat over a Peruvian mountain, is known for having one of the most tumultuous and dangerous productions of all time. Jason Robards was originally cast as the film's lead, but came down with dysentery nearly halfway through filming, causing Herzog to hire longtime adversary Klaus Kinski for the role, having worked together (poorly) on three previous films. Filming took so long that Mario Adorf also dropped out, and was replaced partway through the shoot. Mick Jagger also quit and was edited out. To give you a sense of just how deranged things got on set, while filming, one crew member, bitten by a venomous snake, amputated their own foot with a chainsaw to prevent the poison from spreading.

The legendary Oscar winner was originally set to play the villain of Despicable Me 2, El Macho. However, after recording all his lines, Pacino left the project, citing "creative differences." The role was recast with Benjamin Bratt landing the part. While the real reason for his exit is unknown, fans have pointed out that Bratt, who is Hispanic, is a better fit for the role of Eduardo Pérez/El Macho than Pacino, who is Italian. 

The Godfather III was never going to live up to the hype, but as ScreenRant argues, Ryder may have inadvertently doomed the film. The Beetlejuice star was originally cast as Mary Corleone, the daughter of Al Pacino's Michael Corleone. However, arriving in Italy with only one day before she was set to start filming, Ryder suffered a nervous collapse and was advised by the film's doctors to drop out. The film's director, Francis Ford Coppola, then cast his daughter, Sofia Coppola, in the part. Sofia's acting and flat vocal delivery are often labeled the worst parts of the film.

Hugh Jackman seemingly has Tom Cruise to thank for his career. The Australian actor became a household name when he landed the part of Wolverine at the last minute, thanks to the original actor, Dougray Scott, not being able to make it to set. Scott, who was playing the villain in Mission: Impossible 2, was asked by Cruise to drop out of X-Men, when filming for Mission: Impossible 2 ran longer than expected. Thanks to the scheduling conflict, Jackman was cast three weeks into the start of filming. 

According to Sylvester Stallone, he and Gere never hit it off on the set of the greaser comedy. Things got physical, however, a few weeks into shooting. "We were rehearsing at Coney Island and it was lunchtime, so we decided to take a break, and the only place that was warm was in the backseat of a Toyota," Stallone told Ain't It Cool News. "I was eating a hotdog and he climbs in with a half a chicken covered in mustard with grease nearly dripping out of the aluminum wrapper. I said, 'That thing is going to drip all over the place.' He said, 'Don't worry about it.' I said, 'If it gets on my pants you're gonna know about it.' He proceeds to bite into the chicken and a small, greasy river of mustard lands on my thigh. I elbowed him in the side of the head and basically pushed him out of the car." Stallone and Gere then gave production the decision of who to chop, with the directors opting to replace Gere with Perry King.

Often with Hollywood casting announcements, it's hard to determine whether an A-lister quit, was fired, or something in between. Hopper filmed several days as Christof, the director of The Truman Show in the movie, before Variety announced he'd left the project because of the extremely vague reason of "creative differences." Producers then scrambled to fill the role, eventually casting Ed Harris, who would earn an Oscar nomination for the part. Years later, Hopper revealed he'd been fired by producer Scott Rudin, who never wanted him cast in the first place.

Panic Room would be a completely different movie if not for a knee injury Nicole Kidman sustained while shooting Moulin Rouge! That injury was aggravated while on the Panic Room set, prompting her to drop out and be replaced by Jodie Foster. Thanks to the swap, David Koepp made adjustments to Kristen Stewart's character, Sarah, the daughter of Foster's Meg. While the script had originally played up the differences between Kidman's feminine mother and Stewart's tomboyish daughter, the rewrite leaned into the similarities between Foster and Stewart. 

Firth announced his "conscious uncoupling" from Paddington just months before the film's release and after two separate trailers had dropped. After several attempts to find the correct voice for the beloved bear, Firth and the film's director Paul King agreed that a different voice actor was needed for the part. King eventually hired Ben Whishaw, who has voiced the bear in several films. 

An actor of De Niro's caliber doesn't need to do anything he doesn't want to. In 2008, after being on set for less than a week, he quit Martin Campbell's drama, stating, "Sometimes things don't work out; it's called creative differences." The role was later recast with Ray Winstone.

In the 1967 parody version of Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Casino Royale, which would later be adapted into the 2006 Daniel Craig film, Peter Sellers plays James Bond while Orson Welles plays the villain, Le Chiffre. However, the shoot was plagued with difficulties, including a feud between Sellers and Welles, who refused to film any scenes together. Eventually, Sellers quit mid-filming, leaving the studio to re-write the script to cobble the pre-existing footage into a semi-coherent narrative. 

Guillermo del Toro spent nearly a year creating a version of Frankenstein's monster for Garfield, which included crafting prosthetics and costumes fit to the actor's body. However, only a few weeks before filming was set to begin, Garfield was forced to drop out of the film thanks to scheduling changes post-SAG-AFTRA strikes. Del Toro quickly scrambled to cast Jacob Elordi in the role, building a completely new look for the creature in just nine weeks. It all worked out well for Elordi, who landed his first Oscar nomination for the role.

The iconic Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman portrayal almost didn't happen. The role was originally Bening's, who dropped out at the last minute. "We were a little bit in a panic because we'd fitted the costumes and the mask and everything, and then Annette was pregnant," said producer Denise Di Novi.

In perhaps the most staggering feat of recasting in film history, Ridley Scott opted to recast his film, only a month before its release, after sexual assault allegations against Kevin Spacey broke in 2017. While Spacey didn't technically quit as he'd finished filming the project months prior, Scott filmed eight days of reshoots with Plummer before completely erasing Spacey from the movie. Plummer would go on to earn an Oscar nomination for the feat.