1995’s cyber-thriller The Net starred Sandra Bullock – but it nearly co-starred Bill Gates as the villain. More on the story here.
Go all the way back to 1995, and the cyberthriller The Net envisaged a world where you could get internet access on a beach, where you ordered pizza on a computer, and where some people used the world wide web for nefarious reasons. Pah, bloody movies, making stuff up.
The director of the film was Irwin Winkler, the Oscar-winning producer of movies such as Rocky, Rocky IV, The Right Stuff and Goodfellas. And he’s the latest guest on the Film Stories podcast, as he promotes his new movie, The Alto Knights. There’s a review of that at the bottom of this article.
With The Net though, a tale did the rounds that Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates was in line to play the villain of the film. He would have co-starred opposite Sandra Bullock in the movie, as a man who basically harnesses internet technology for primarily personal gain.
This all sounded a bit far-fetched to me, though, so sat opposite Irwin Winker, I asked him straight out. Turns out it’s absolutely true. Not only was Bill Gates sounded out for a role in The Net, he was very open to it.
“He said he would do it, but his people talked him out of it!”, Winkler told me.
“Absolutely. [I] not only approached him, he said he wanted to do it!”
It’s not much of a stretch to understand why ‘his people’ weren’t that keen on the idea, and the closest we got to seeing a version of Bill Gates portrayed in a Hollywood movie would turn out to be 2001’s Antitrust, where Tim Robbins plays the criminal CEO of a large tech company. Obviously this proved to be entirely fiction, and not based on Gates at all, it’s just some people unfairly drew comparisons.
The Net does still feel like a lost moment in time, had Gates elected to take on the role. As it is, the 1995 film made do with being a box office hit, and seeing a good chunk of the stuff it foresaw coming true.
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