Alex Garland & Producer Andrew Macdonald On The Viral ‘Ex Machina’ Dance Scene And Almost Casting Jake Gyllenhaal As The Film’s Lead: “It Was Never Gonna Work” — Edinburgh
deadline.comJake Gyllenhaal almost landed in one of the lead roles in Alex Garland’s Oscar-winning debut feature Ex Machina after the filmmaker and his longtime producer, Andrew Macdonald, were pushed to consider the actor to secure financing. “The sales companies wanted us to cast Jake Gyllenhaal because he was bankable and they could sell foreign territories,” Macdonald said yesterday afternoon during a Q&A alongside Garland at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival. “That would have changed the whole film,” Macdonald continued adding that that negotiations with Gyllenhaal’s reps ultimately didn’t go far. “I remember having a conversation with Jake Gyllenhaal’s lawyer about his needs.
It was never gonna work,” Macdonald said to laughs from the packed ground in Edinburgh. Alicia Vikander and Oscar Isaac were later cast in the film’s lead roles.
But Macdonald added that at the time, neither actor carried enough weight to “raise the money through international sales.” Macdonald and Garland instead decided to turn to Hollywood to secure financing, which they said offered them the freedom to pull in the collaborators they wanted thanks to a unique set of circumstances. “We decided to make the film with Universal International and they had a film with Oscar Isaac, the Coen brothers film, and they believed it would win Oscars, so they thought he was a winner,” Macdonald said. “They also had an Alicia Vikander film that they thought was gonna be a winner as well, so they backed us.” Garland described Ex Machina as his favorite directorial effort so far and said it served as an antidote to some of the “toxic” film sets he had spent time on as a writer. “The cast was young and hard-working and committed,” Garland said of his Ex
Read more on deadline.com