Voice Actors Who Were Replaced Mid-Recording
Casting can be a frenzied game of musical chairs fueled by whims and cocaine right up until filming, at which point you’d better be certain because replacing an actor will probably mean extensive (and expensive) reshoots. The same isn’t necessarily true of a voice actor, however. You can let those guys record entire movies and then let someone else do it all again — and they have.
Her
Samantha Morton didn’t just record an entire performance as Joaquin Phoenix’s A.I. girlfriend in Her. They were actually on set together, acting in real time, albeit with Morton hidden away in a four-by-four plywood box so as not to ruin the illusion of being a computer. “It was only in post production,” director Spike Jonze later said, “that we realized that what the character/movie needed was different from what Samantha and I had created together.” He then hired Scarlett Johansson to re-record the entire movie, probably from a much cushier booth.
Hercules
One of the most underrated films of the Disney Renaissance is nevertheless tainted by a faint odor of James Woods, but it didn’t always. John Lithgow recorded the entire character of Hades before it was declared that his performance didn’t work with the animation, and no offense to the animators, but that sounds like an animation problem to us.
Chicken Little
When Disney’s Chicken Little was initially developed, it featured a little girl chicken no doubt amazingly voiced by Oscar winner Holly Hunt. After it was “boarded and finished,” however, with Hunter having reportedly done eight months of work, Michael Eisner suddenly decided the character should be a boy. “I remember being told, ‘Girls will go see a movie with a boy protagonist, but boys won’t see a movie with a girl protagonist,’” director Mark Dindal said. “That was the wisdom at the time, until Frozen (came) out and (made) $1 billion.” But what were they supposed to do, deny the star power of Zach Braff in 2005 and only 2005?
Paddington
In 2014, mere months before the movie’s premiere and even after a trailer had already been released, Colin Firth announced that he was “consciously uncoupling” from the Paddington movie, explaining that, “it’s been bittersweet to see this delightful creature take shape and come to the sad realisation that he simply doesn’t have my voice.” Director Paul King added, “We love the voice and we love the bear, but as our young bear came into being, we agreed that the two didn’t seem to fit.” You guys can just say it: He was too sexy for his suitcase.
Shrek
There are few animated characters with voices as recognizable as Mike Myers’ Scottish take on a fairy tale ogre, but the green meanie originally just kind of sounded like Chris Farley, mostly because he was played by Chris Farley. The recasting didn’t have anything to do with anyone’s dissatisfaction with that, though; Farley tragically died a maddening 85 percent of the way through the recording process. To think, if things had only gone a little differently, everyone born between 1985 and 2000 might have spent the next 10 years screaming “DONKEY!” in a different accent.
