Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn has revealed that Nicolas Cage's role as Big Daddy was originally going to be played by Brad Pitt. Released in 2010 and based on the  comic of the same name by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr., Kick-Ass was fairly well-received on release and brought in a modest haul at the box office. It was enough to earn a sequel, Kick-Ass 2, which released in 2013.

Kick-Ass is the story a teen (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) with no powers or special abilities who goes out and becomes a real-life superhero. Its action is over the top, the fight scenes are very bloody, and the movie gets a lot of mileage out of then 12-year-old Chloë Grace Moretz's Hit-Girl dropping F-bombs. As Hit-Girl's father and vigilante partner, Big Daddy, Kick-Ass stars Nicolas Cage. The character is kind of like if Adam West's Batman was totally cool using heavy firearms to murder crime lords and Cage's performance perfectly captures that strange blend and is a large part of why Kick-Ass works as well as it does. Only now, it's been revealed he wasn't actually Vaughn's first pick to play the role.

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In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Vaughn reflects on getting the first Kick-Ass movie made, saying that at the time: "No studio would touch it." He managed to bring Brad Pitt on board as a producer, having previously worked together on Guy Ritchie's Snatch, and he mortgaged his own home to finance the movie. At the time, Vaughn was also considering Pitt for the role of Big Daddy, but that casting simply wasn't meant to be because shortly thereafter, Pitt would join Quentin Tarantino in making Inglourious Basterds. The role of Big Daddy then went to Nicolas Cage, who Vaughn believed would understand how best to play the character given his own love of comic book superheroes.

Big Daddy poses on the Kick-Ass movie poster.

Following the release of Kick-Ass 2, there was some discussion of a Kick-Ass 3, but the sequel's box office and critical reception both fell short of the original and so a third film didn't really feel warranted. Still, that hasn't stopped Vaughn from frequently discussing how much he'd like to make Kick-Ass 3, reboot Kick-Ass, or make a Hit-Girl spinoff. For her part, Moretz has already said she wouldn't ever return as Hit-Girl due to the poor experience she had while filming the second Kick-Ass. Recently, the Kick-Ass comics have introduced a new character under the Kick-Ass mask, Patricia Lee, an Afghanistan war vet. Actress Tessa Thompson has expressed interest in playing the new Kick-Ass, though only after Vaughn shared that she'd be his pick for the live-action version of the role.

Of course, Vaughn doesn't away get his first picks, and ultimately, Cage proved to be the better choice in the end. Granted, we'll never really know how Pitt would have approached Big Daddy, but seeing as the only superhero role he's played has been his brilliant cameo as The Vanisher in Deadpool 2, he clearly doesn't have much interest in them. Cage, on the other hand, almost played Superman on the big screen in Tim Burton's eventually-canceled Superman Lives and he twice played Ghost Rider in two universally panned movies. As it stands, Big Daddy is by far Cage's best superhero performance, and it's strange to imagine a world in where it could have been Pitt instead.

Next: Can Netflix Adapt Kick-Ass Into An Original TV Series?

Source: THR