You know you’ve screwed up when a studio is willing to spend several million dollars to cut you out of a movie just a couple months before release and replace you with a totally different actor. As you’ve heard already, that’s exactly what happened with Kevin Spacey in the Ridley Scott film, All The Money In The World. When news of the allegations against him surfaced, Director Ridley Scott jumped into action to re-shoot Spacey’s scenes with Christopher Plummer taking over. The funny thing about the replacement is that critics had already been talking about the great special effects work done on Spacey to make him look decades older than he actually was. It turns out that the quick fix was just to use an older actor (Spacey is 58 and Plummer is 87). You can see the first footage of the film with Plummer in the new trailer:
As to how Ridley Scott managed to pull off the re-shoots, he just spoke to EW about the situation:
On how he found out about the allegations about Kevin Spacey and when he decided to push forward:
“I was finished with the film and was in [U.K. recording studio] Abbey Road finalizing the music. Someone was like: Guess what? And that’s where it began. I sat and thought about it and realized, we cannot. You can’t tolerate any kind of behavior like that. And it will affect the film. We cannot let one person’s action affect the good work of all these other people. It’s that simple.”
On the re-casting process:
“You have to know who you’re going to go for [to recast the role] and if he’s available. Chris [Plummer] was always on the list. So you find that out, but quietly, because you don’t want it going around. I flew into New York and met with [Plummer] and he said yes. So then we had to figure out if everyone else would be available to fit in these new days of shooting. Miraculously, they were. Before you can make the decision you have to make these quick phone calls around — not to the actors directly, but to the agents — saying there’s a possibility I may need some pickups [a.k.a. additional shooting days]. You don’t say why because of the gossip, but of course it was really for something much more significant… It was better to do it like this because once you inform the system, it’s everywhere. Once two people know what it’s about, bang, it’s all out there.”
On why he decided against delaying the film’s release date:
“Because I know I can deliver. [Laughs] I move like lightning. I’m already two scenes ahead. It’s simple! If you know what you’re doing, you don’t need 19 takes. You do one for the actor, one for me. It’s all planned out. When you storyboard, you’ve already pre-filmed the movie in your head — the wide shots, close shots, establishing shots. You’ve gotten some of your weird ideas when you’re quietly sitting, storyboarding by yourself. After a while you learn to trust and listen to your intuition. And I listen to mine. I trust it.”