Wes Craven's werewolf movie Cursed famously went through heavy tinkering prior to release, including cutting the following actors. Craven has been gone for a number of years now, but his legacy as a horror filmmaker will likely never fade away. A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream would be enough by themselves to guarantee Craven's spot in horror history, but films like The Last House on the Left or The Hills Have Eyes only further cement his position further.
On the other end of the spectrum though, not everything Wes Craven directed became a classic. One of his lesser works is Cursed, a 2005 effort that marked Craven's first foray into the lycanthrope subgenre. A werewolf movie by Craven sounds like it could be amazing, but sadly, Dimension Films executives meddled with the final cut, reducing Cursed's rating from R to PG-13, and demanding extensive reshoots and rewrites. It sank like a stone at the box office and earned bad reviews too, with Craven disliking the released version.
What's worse is that details that have since been released concerning Craven's original Cursed plan make it sound like one of the best werewolf movies never made. One thing that got an extreme makeover over the course of the movie's journey from page to screen was the cast list, as many actors originally signed on for the project didn't end up being part of it.
The Actors Cut From Wes Craven's Cursed
The most notable actor cut from Cursed was Skeet Ulrich, who memorably played killer Billy Loomis in Scream, and was originally cast as the movie's third lead, a character named Vince. Ulrich opted to drop out after being dissatisfied with the many changes to Cursed's script, and Joshua Jackson's Jake effectively replaced him in the final film. The character of Jenny Tate, played by singer/actress Mya in Cursed, was originally played by another singer/actress, future This Is Us star Mandy Moore. For the rest of the actors who got cut from Wes Craven's Cursed, it's not clear what roles they were intended to play, or if they correspond to roles that did end up in the movie.
These performers include James Brolin, Omar Epps, Scott Foley, Robert Forster, and Corey Feldman, as well as Illeana Douglas and Heather Langenkamp. Douglas is arguably the least known by name, but she's a prolific character actress, having appeared in over 100 films and shows, and played a supporting role in 1999's criminally underrated ghost story Stir of Echoes. As for Langenkamp, Craven fans will certainly recognize her, as she played Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Many of these actors and actresses did actually shoot scenes for Cursed, but all the material was jettisoned when producer Bob Weinstein insisted on sweeping reshoots. Fans will likely always wonder what could've been if Craven had been able to make the werewolf movie he intended do.