Recasting Ryan Rough Draft

Sometimes, when you’re a movie mook, you find yourself in recasting mode. You’re watching a film, yet you sense the whole thing playing a little (or a lot) better with another performer onboard. You play out the movie in your head, over and over again, until finally your (recast) version’s as real as the actual one.
Obviously as a huge fan of Meg and Michelle I’d love to have seen them co-star in a film. Someday AI will probably make recasting feasible. For now, indulge me. Run these alternately casted versions in your mind. And I suspect you’ll soon be thinking of the films you’d like to recast. As the whole thing’s a flight of fancy, you can cast Meg in one of Michelle’s starring roles. Replace Ryan with Pfeiffer in a Meg movie. Have them as co-stars in each other’s films, or completely recast a different project. In this open casting call, here are some of my ideas.

Meg in a Pfeiffer Pfilm

Ryan replacing Pfeiffer as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Tom Hanks replacing Michael Keaton as Batman/Bruce Wayne in Batman Returns. I’m sure this will be controversial with Pfeiffer pfans, and it may have been a disaster, but I would have liked to have seen it.

Meg (as co-star) in a Pfeiffer Pfilm

Ryan replacing Amanda Peet as office vamp Celia in One Fine Day. A cameo role for the reigning queen of rom-com would surely have made this film an even sweeter box-office proposition. Just imagine Meg’s gorgeous girl next door flirting with George Clooney’s Jack and sharing split-screen phone conversations with Michelle, before coming face to face with Pfeiffer at the film’s finish.

Michelle in a Meg Movie…

… Replacing Ryan as Annie Reed in Sleepless in Seattle. Michelle was actually offered for the role before Meg was cast and later regretted turning it down. If it had been a success it may have lead her to do more rom-coms, plus it would have given her a chance to star opposite Tom Hanks, if only for a few minutes.

Michelle (as co-star) in a Meg Movie

La Pfeiffer replacing Kelly Preston as Linda in Addicted to Love is a doozy, because only Michelle could have made plausible cause for any fool dumping the divine Meg Ryan. My mind reels at the thought of Michelle playing Maggie’s nemesis Linda. How hot would that have been? Watching mid-’90s Meg and mid-’90s Michelle together, in the same film, at the peak of their personal pulchritude, may have caused me to spontaneously combust.

Meg and Michelle as co-stars

In Practical Magic (1998) Meg & Michelle would play witchy sisters who love and support each other despite their differing outlooks on life. Playing against type, Pfeiffer would replace Sandra Bullock as the luscious, lovelorn sister, while Ryan would play Nicole Kidman’s role as the Rubenesque, free spirit who looks for love in all the wrong places. Together they would have cooked up a comfort food film that would have been impossible to resist.