According to casting director Pam Dixon, Angelina, Scarlett and Alicia all went for the lead role Sarah Bailey, which was eventually played by Robin Tunney in the 1996 flick.
- May 21, 2016
AceShowbiz - Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson and Alicia Silverstone almost starred in 1996's supernatural horror film "The Craft". Casting director Pam Dixon reveals in an interview with The Huffington Post that she screen tested the now-huge-A-listers.
"We did these tests and we tested a lot of girls, some of whom have become really well-known," Pam says, "We actually had a hold on somebody that we had to let go because she got offered another film, and we didn't know if the movie was really happening. That girl was Angelina Jolie. She did 'Foxfire' instead."
She continues, "Another person who came in was Scarlett Johansson, who was just 12 at the time. The other girl was Alicia Silverstone. This would have been '95. She had just shot 'Clueless', but it had not come out. Alicia also got something between the time that we read them and the time we were really going to make the movie, so we couldn't pick her up either and she went to do something else. They were all really for Sarah."
The lead role obviously ended up going to Robin Tunney, who actually auditioned for a smaller part in the movie. "Robin was originally cast in the part that Neve Campbell played, but we wanted her for the lead," director Andy Fleming says, "We had to talk her into playing the lead, which was weird. But she did it. She wanted to play Bonnie, and we said, 'No, we want you to be Sarah.' It was like a reverse-Hollywood story where she wanted the smaller part."
During the interview, producer Doug Wick also gives an update on the upcoming sequel, which Sony Pictures first announced last year. Leigh Janiak is set to direct and co-write the sequel alongside Phil Graziadei.
"It's not so much a remake - it's sort of saying young women exploring their power, what would that be like right now?" Doug explains, "Obviously it's an incredibly relevant, exciting subject, so we hired a really great female writer/director, Leigh Janiak, who also has a talented writing partner."
"We were only going to explore it if there was an exciting way to go, and they came in with [something] very fresh - a new group of girls, much more of this era, who begin some explorations with power that they don't understand. They had just incredibly compelling ideas for a way to make a new, exciting, surprising movie for teenage girls," he adds.
