Alex Garland’s 2014 sci-fi thriller Ex Machina could almost have starred Jake Gyllenhaal. “It was never gonna work,” its producer has said.
Terrifyingly almost a decade old, writer-director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina might have starred Jake Gyllenhaal – mostly so it could secure international funding. This tidbit of film history was revealed at a post-screening Q&A at the Edinburgh Film Festival on the 18th August, with Garland joined by producer Andrew Macdonald for the occasion.
“The sales companies wanted us to cast Jake Gyllenhaal because he was bankable and they could sell foreign territories,” Macdonald said, as reported by Deadline. “That would have changed the whole film.”
Unfortunately, Macdonald didn’t elaborate on who exactly Gyllenhaal would have played in Garland’s claustrophobic piece about a sentient android, its billionaire inventor and a young computer nerd who winds up falling in love with it. Our money’s on the billionaire, played with irresistible intensity by Oscar Isaac; Gyllenhaal’s a touch too old and robust to play the nerd, a role which went to Domhnall Gleeson.
Alicia Vikander was rightly nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the AI android – one of several awards and nods Ex Machina received in the mid-2010s – though we’d have paid good money to see Gyllenhaal in that part.
As you’ve probably guessed, the Gyllenhaal casting never happened, and Macdonald glancingly suggested that the actor might have needed some creature comforts often required by major Hollywood stars. “I remember having a conversation with Jake Gyllenhaal’s lawyer about his needs,” the producer said. “It was never gonna work.”
Interestingly, it was the casting of Alicia Vikander and Oscar Isaac which ultimately helped Ex Machina get the funding it needed. The project found a home with Universal, where Isaac and Vikander already had film projects which the company thought could have been in a shout for Oscar nominations.
“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.”
It’s not clear which films Macdonald is referring to here; the Vikander movie may have been Anna Karenina, which came out in 2012 and did indeed receive various Oscar nods. The only film Isaac made with the Coen brothers was Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), which was also showered with awards but had nothing to do with Universal.
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Moving on, and Alex Garland revealed another fascinating bit of behind-the-scenes info: the meme-worthy dance sequence, featuring Isaac and Sonoya Mizuno busting out some disco moves, was designed to create a shift in texture from all the simmering tension elsewhere in the film. Garland had, he said, seen director Mark Romanek’s Kazuro Ishiguro adaptation Never Let Me Go, and noted that it was all quite tonally similar.
“The problem the film had had nothing to do with the source material,” said Garland, who wrote the adapted screenplay. “That was a brilliant novel. The film hit a particular note but then didn’t vary that note. It’s a good film in some ways, but flawed in that respect. The reason that the Ex Machina disco dancing scene exists is because of Never Let Me Go. I thought I had to disrupt what was happening in the film. I couldn’t be afraid to disrupt the tone. In fact, I had to seek out to disrupt the tone. And it turned out to be a GIF.”
Ex Machina can currently be viewed on Amazon Prime Video in the UK.
