Updated
Joe Manganiello believes Tom Cruise may have influenced the casting of Amazon’s Reacher series, costing him the lead role because of his past relationship with Sofia Vergara the actor recounts how a promising audition allegedly ended with his team questioning whether the Mission: Impossible star had intervened.
Manganiello writes that he met Don Granger, an executive at Skydance Media, in January 2020 to discuss the adaptation of Lee Child’s novels as their conversation reportedly lasted 90 minutes, including a discussion of criticism surrounding Cruise’s portrayal of Reacher in the 2012 and 2016 films.
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The character is described in the books as a towering 6-foot-5 figure, considerably taller than Cruise, who is famously around 5-foot-7 and Manganiello claims Granger praised his resemblance to the literary character.
“You are the closest thing to Jack Reacher that I’ve ever met in my entire life,” Manganiello says Granger told him, in his memoir Bloodline. “You look like Reacher is described in the books. You have his effortless intelligence.”
According to the memoir, showrunner Nick Santora was sufficiently impressed that he began writing the rest of the season with Manganiello in mind and the actor also says Skydance owner David Ellison and Child were “thrilled” with his performance.
He believed he was a strong contender for the role but the situation reportedly changed when Manganiello was presented to Amazon executive Jen Salke as he claims she was angry about being excluded from the casting process.
Manganiello also believes a group of predominantly male producers was pushing her toward a decision without her involvement and he ultimately did not land the part, which went to Cruise as he and his team considered several possible explanations.
The memoir says they speculated that Cruise, who had served as an executive producer on the show, might have intervened and vetoed the casting because of Vergara, who reportedly dated in 2005, years before she married Manganiello in November 2015.
However, the alleged intervention remains speculation attributed to Manganiello’s team, rather than an established fact.
Joe Manganiello and Caitlin O'Connor LAPRESSE
Cruise’s Digger faces a costly box-office struggle
Cruise is facing a separate challenge with Digger, his latest film, which has struggled to draw audiences and has reportedly earned about $35 million worldwide, far below the sums needed to justify its cost.
Estimates put Digger’s production budget and marketing expenses at roughly $280 million, with the film projected to finish its theatrical run near $50 million and those figures point to a substantial shortfall.
Variety has estimated that Digger would need about $350 million worldwide to break even, whilst a Warner Bros. spokesperson has put the threshold slightly lower at closer to $300 million.
Either way, the film’s current haul leaves it far from the level required to recoup its spending as ticket sales fell by 60 percent during Digger’s second weekend, compounding concerns about its commercial prospects.
Cruise has said box-office figures are not what he thinks about while making a film but the movie’s performance has put its finances under pressure.