Over the last few months the cast for 20th Century Fox’s new Predator film has grown considerably. Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn, Trevante Rhodes, Keegan Michael Key, Thomas Jane and Sterling K. Brown are all onboard to star. Now UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor has revealed that he approached to play the film’s lead, but turned it down due to other commitments and, not surprisingly… money.
McGregor, who is set to make his acting debut in an episode of Game of Thrones Season 7, recently revealed that he has been offered a number of roles in popular film franchises. Amongst those are XXX: The Return of Xander Cage and Shane Black’s The Predator:
“I’ll tell you there’s a lot of offers that I’ve turned down. I got offered The Predator movie. There’s a new Predator movie coming out and the guys came to me, did you see that horse thing I’ve done, the horse racing? That was like three days’ solid work for a hell of a lot of money, for three days. During that three day course, the people from Predator who are having this new Predator movie, a blockbuster… They came in and tried to sell the whole s–t. ‘We want you to be the main guy and you’re gonna fight Predator’ and I’m like ‘This sounds brilliant! How much?’ Not enough. We went back and forth negotiating and the number climbed up but if I was to do it [it] would mean eight weeks in Canada, in Toronto or somewhere. It’s too long a time. You can’t do a million things at once. The Pegasus thing was one thing because it was like three days, in and out. But seven, eight weeks on a film set is heavy as f**k. Plus it would have crept in around when he’s due (McGregor’s unborn baby boy). I didn’t want to get tricky with that so I turned down that offer.”
It’s likely that the mixed martial arts fighter was offered the role that eventually went to actor Boyd Holbrook. Benicio Del Toro was originally supposed to star but was replaced by Boyd Holbrook due to scheduling conflicts.
The Predator is directed and co-written by Shane Black (Iron Man 3) as a sequel to the film Predator (1987), Predator 2 (1990) and Predators (2010). The film was originally conceived as a reboot of the Predator film series, until Shane Black came aboard and confirmed he will be making a sequel instead, as he wanted to continue to explore the Predator mythology.
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