To date, Brad Pitt’s fun appearance as Vanisher in ‘Deadpool 2’ is his only on-screen contribution to the superhero film genre. Okay, that’s not entirely true: He voiced Metro Man in the animated comedy “Megamind,” but he was a supporting character and a goof on Superman. Yet Pitt has had decades to bring his leading man cachet to donning spandex, and he has kept his distance.
There was a time, however, when Pitt was almost persuaded to take a leading role in a comic book movie. Unsurprisingly, it was an author’s project that ignored the conventions of the genre. It was also intended, if its filmmaker could raise the financing, to become the most violent and profane superhero film of all time. The script was an invigorating read: bold, hilarious and well-structured. Nothing is certain until the cameras roll, but this project seemed perversely blessed.
Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman’s screenplay adaptation of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s “Kick-Ass” had the town buzzing in the late 2000s. There was only one problem: No studio would touch it. While the graphic violence and harsh R-rated dialogue were a drag, the biggest problem was Hit-Girl, a ten-year-old killing machine who was coached in her deadly profession by her Batman father, Big Daddy.
Realizing he would need a star for Big Daddy (because the main character, a teenager turned masked vigilante, needed to be a fresh face), Vaughn brought in Brad Pitt, with whom he had worked on Guy Ritchie’s classic, “Snatch”, released in 2000, working on the film as a producer. His ulterior motive was to cast Pitt as Big Daddy, but that didn’t happen.
Brad Pitt got an awesome role in a Quentin Tarantino movie
It’s as true today as it was in the late 2000s: if you cast Brad Pitt in your movie, a studio will almost certainly make your movie. Vaughn really needed Pitt, too. The filmmaker mortgaged his house to finance “Kick-Ass,” which, according to a 2020 report THR article about the film, he considered a “scary” proposition.
It’s unclear exactly how far Vaughn has come with Pitt, but we do know what knocked him out of the running. Once Quentin Tarantino offered Pitt the role of U.S. Army Lt. Aldo Raine in “Inglourious Basterds,” the star was immediately unavailable. So Vaughn turned to a star who, while an avid comic book fan, wasn’t as bankable as Pitt.
Nicolas Cage ended up being perfectly cast as Big Daddy, a strangely earnest and loving father who arms his daughter to help her track down and kill the mobsters who got him kicked off the force and drove his wife to suicide. Vaughn and casting directors Sarah Finn and Lucinda Syson nailed every choice, and he ended up delivering a viscerally thrilling film. But it took a raucous reception in Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con in 2009 to convince a distributor, Lionsgate, to release the film. I was there, and, aside from the “Twilight” panels (which looked like Beatles concerts), I’ve never seen an SDCC-specific movie like “Kick-Ass” (and all Vaughn did was show three clips).
I’ve heard rumors that there was a “Kick-Ass 2”, but I refuse to believe them.
