Kick-Ass Originally Cast Brad Pitt Instead of Nicolas Cage

New details about Kick-Ass have come to light, and Brad Pitt was originally supposed to play the role of Big Daddy instead of Nicolas Cage. The Hollywood Reporter talked to the creative team of Matthew Vaughn and Mark Millar about the film this week. The interview revealed that they had brought Pitt on as a producer and then he got snatched by Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds. So, without the big draw, in stepped Cage who relished the chance to play a superhero on the big screen. he’s been a huge fan of the genre for a long time. Both filmmakers actually said that it was his idea to approach Big Daddy as a sort of Adam West figure.

“I knew Nic loved comic books and superheroes, and this script was a love letter to superheroes,” Vaughn told them. “The film imagines what it would be like if the ultimate fanboy suddenly decided to play superhero, and some people mistakingly felt we were attacking the genre, but I knew Nic would buy in.”

Even more worrisome than that was the fact that a lot of studios were scared to touch the film. Being an R-rated film in the superhero genre was tougher back then before the world of Deadpool, Logan, and Joker.

“They weren’t even intrigued,” Vaughn says. “Literally every person who saw it or read the script said, ‘No… I was desperate to make a superhero film, and I liked Mark’s pitch the moment I heard it. According to Hollywood, it was the wrong move because no one wanted to make it. That just got me even more excited, because it seemed so obvious to me.”

“They called Hit-Girl a disaster and said the only way to save her was to make her 25 instead of 10 years old,” Millar remembered. “They also said no one wanted to hear superheroes cuss and recommended hand-to-hand combat instead of knives and guns.”
“No studio would touch it,” Vaughn recalls. “So I had to mortgage my house in order to finance the film, which was scary, to be honest.”

“It’s even more scary once you’ve mortgaged the house, made the film and realize you now need to sell it to the people who said ‘No’ to it in the first place,” Vaughn added. “Then you think, ‘My god, I’ve actually drunk the Kool-Aid.’”

Did you love Kick-Ass? Will you be watching it at home this weekend? Let us know down in the comments!