By Erin Free

What Happened?

“I wanted a house with a swimming pool and an orange tree,” director, Nicolas Winding Refn, told FilmInk in 2011. “I was living in The Hills, and I had the Hollywood sign above me.” The iconoclastic Danish filmmaker (who first made an impact with his confronting Pusher trilogy) has always been frank and open about his burning desire to become an émigré director in Hollywood, and he finally got there with the slick, neon-drenched thriller, Drive, starring Ryan Gosling as a toothpick-chewing stuntman who moonlights as a getaway driver, and eventually finds himself in the crosshairs of a quietly menacing mobster. Drive, however, was almost the kicker to an émigré career for another international director. The thriller was originally set to be the first foray in Hollywood by British filmmaker, Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent, Centurion, Doomsday), with Hugh Jackman positioned to slide into the driver’s seat. “This is something that I haven’t done before, and I’ve wanted to bring a British sensibility to an LA shoot and a scorched classic film noir concept,” Marshall told Variety. “[Scripter] Hossein Amini is a fantastic writer, and he’s written three amazing car chases in the film. He’s turned them into dramatic scenes as opposed to the usual crash, bang, and wallop.” Though textured, the aim was still for the film to be action-driven (major studio, Universal, initially owned the property), and while the reasons for Hugh Jackman dropping out of the project are not 100% clear, The Hollywood Reporter suggested that the actor was “hesitant to work with then-neophyte director, Nicolas Winding Refn” after Marshall departed the film.

Would It Have Worked? 

Considerably older than Ryan Gosling, and a very different type of actor, Hugh Jackman would have rocked a more straightforward approach to the material, but with him at the wheel, Drive would have undoubtedly been jacked of its cult cache.

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