90s | Movies | Pop Culture
'The Craft' Almost Had An Entirely Different Cast And Now We Can't Unsee It
As October 31st approaches, we can't help but re-watch all of our favorite Halloween flicks from back in the day. While the typical slasher movies are popular this time of year, there's nothing wrong with opting for something a little more fun. I mean, you can never go wrong with Hocus Pocus or Halloweentown, but sometimes we also need to give underrated movies, like The Craft, a chance.
The spooky film had all the elements of a perfect 90s Halloween movie, including a quadrant of witches, cool special effects, Catholic school girl-meets-goth outfits to inspire your next costume, cheesy lines, and of course a stellar cast featuring the uniquely named Skeet Ulrich.
In addition to Ulrich, the movie also starred Robin Tunney, Neve Campbell, Rachel True and Fairuza Balk as the high school misfits who discover the true meaning of having strength through witchcraft.
There's been rumors about a possible reboot by Sony, and as the chatter gets louder, we hear something new about the original movie everyday like how the movie almost had totally different lead actresses.
The casting director recently sat down for an interview with Entertainment Weekly and revealed which popular actresses almost had a role in the cult classic.
Casting director Pam Dixon and director Andrew Fleming admitted that casting the young women was one of the biggest hurdles they faced.
"There was not a generation of teen actors that you could draw from at that point," said Fleming, referring to the mid-90s.
It took them nine months to a make the final decision on the actresses who would play the roles of the four witches, Rochelle, Bonnie, Nancy and Sarah. Several actresses that we've come to love tried for a part in the movie, but Tunney, Campbell, True, and Balk beat out over 600 hopefuls.
Some of the actresses who were in the running include:
Alicia Silverstone
Scarlett Johansson
And Angelina Jolie
We can't even begin to imagine what the movie would be like if it featured these other actresses.
Dixon also revealed other interesting tidbits about the casting process including the fact that they didn't need much convincing to cast Campbell because not only did she do "really, really good" at the audition, her popularity on the show Party of Five made her "the biggest name" of them all.
It wasn't until the right girls were all cast that the studio gave Fleming the green light to start filming.
"When we finally found four, I said, 'Let’s do this thing where the girls walk toward the camera in their witchy attire,' and we did it in slow motion and we put Portishead over it so that you got the feel of the movie," explained Fleming.
He continued, "What got the movie finally greenlit was when we shot the four girls walking. That image made the studio say, 'Okay, I get this.'"
Guess we owe Dixon and her team a huge thank you for helping create such a badass movie that 20 years later still resonates with us.