Warning: SPOILERS for The Offer Episode 5 - "Kiss The Ring"
It's hard to imagine anyone but Al Pacino playing Michael Corleone but The Offer shows why his casting as the lead in The Godfather was so controversial. Played by Anthony Ippolito, Pacino is a minor character in The Offer, which focuses on producer Albert S. Ruddy (Miles Teller), as the show's main protagonist. But The Offer also highlights just how much director Francis Ford Coppola (Dan Fogler) wanted Pacino to star in The Godfather and why the behind-the-scenes drama behind his casting was so difficult.
In 1971, Al Pacino was a well-known and respected actor on Broadway but he only had one film, The Panic In Needle Park, to his credit. As The Offer depicts, Paramount Pictures' head of production Robert Evans (Matthew Goode) was under a great deal of pressure to bring his ninth place studio more hits. Evans scored with Love Story, which starred his wife Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal, and grossed $100-million at the box office. Evans needed The Godfather to be Paramount's next blockbuster and he hated the idea of Al Pacino playing the lead role of Michael Corleone. Evans wasn't impressed by Pacino's screen tests and deemed the actor "too short." Plus Bob wanted a movie star like Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, or Jack Nicholson headlining The Godfather opposite Marlon Brando, who was another choice of Coppola's Evans was against. But the director won out and got Al Pacino. Of course, Coppola was absolutely right and the rest is history, but Al Pacino's casting still wasn't cut-and-dry.
As it plays out in The Offer, Al Pacino was contracted to MGM for a different film about organized crime, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. Pacino's agent turned down The Godfather because of this commitment, although the actor personally says no to Ruddy in The Offer. It fell to a disgruntled Robert Evans to secure Pacino, who had the support of his boss at Gulf + Western, Charlie Bludhorn (Burn Gorham), after Ruddy and Coppola went over Evans' head. In The Offer, Evans meets with his counterpart at MGM, James Aubrey, and they negotiate a deal for Al Pacino to star in The Godfather for Paramount. In real life, Evans turned to his friend and reputed Mafia lawyer, Sidney Korshak, to deal with MGM. After a 20-minute negotiation with Korshak, Aubrey called Evans, called him a series of expletives, and announced, "I’ll get you for this … the midget’s [Pacino’s] yours."
The key to Evans and Korshak securing Pacino for The Godfather was that in the early 1970s, MGM was owned by corporate raider and Las Vegas hotel magnate Kirk Kerkorian, who had ties to organized crime, and Aubrey ran the MGM studio for Kerkorian. When Evans asked Korshak what he had said to Kerkorian that swayed him to release Pacino, Korshak replied, "I asked him if he wanted to finish building his hotel." The story, which Evans wrote in his biography, The Kid Stays In The Picture, has eerie echoes of the infamous scene in The Godfather when Tom Hagan (Robert Duvall) got studio head Jack Woltz (John Marley) to allow Johnny Fontaine (Al Martino) to star in his war movie by leaving a decapitated horse's head in the magnate's bed. Amusingly, The Offer previously placed Evans in Woltz's shoes when he declared that Al Pacino would never star in The Godfather.
When it looked like Al Pacino as Michael fell through, The Offer accurately shows James Caan as the replacement choice for the role of the youngest Corleone son. Coppola hated that idea because he saw Caan as Sonny, Don Corleone's hot-tempered firstborn who Caan memorably portrayed. For Coppola, there was no one else but the quiet and intense Al Pacino who could ever embody Michael Corleone in The Godfather. And even though the studio was steadfastly against it, Evans still made sure Coppola got Pacino, who proved to be one of the greatest castings in movie history.
New episodes of The Offer stream Thursdays on Paramount+.