Gary Oldman opens up about nearly voicing General Grievous in the Star Wars prequels. Released in 2005, Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith was billed at the time as the final Star Wars movie, closing out the prequel trilogy. The film grossed $868 million worldwide to become the highest-grossing film of the year domestically and the second-highest-grossing film worldwide.
While audiences were turning out to see how Anakin Skywalker turned into Darth Vader, the film also introduced a fresh new villain to the franchise in the form of the lightsaber-wielding cyborg General Grievous. Much like Boba Fett before him, Grievous made his introduction into the Star Wars universe first in the animated series Star Wars: Clone Wars in an episode airing in 2004. While Grievous only made one appearance in the film series, the character has become a beloved staple of the franchise and has appeared multiple times in the computer-animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars with all the character's appearances following Revenge of the Sith being voiced by ILM sound editor Matthew Wood.
Wood was not the original choice to play General Grievous, as originally Oldman was cast in the part. In an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, via The Playlist, promoting his newest series Slow Horses on Apple TV+, Oldman reveals that he did record dialogue as General Grievous and was directed by George Lucas who had a great time working with him. However, union rules ultimately prevented Lucas from using Oldman's vocal performance. Oldman said:
“Well, I did a voice for ‘Star Wars’…was it General Grievous?” What happened was something to do with union stuff and non-union stuff. I was not going to be the poster boy for [breaking union rules]. [Lucas] directed me the whole thing; yeah, he was terrific."
George Lucas dropped out of both the Director's Guild of America and The Writer's Guild of America following a dispute over keeping the opening crawl at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back and featuring the credits at the end of the film. Lucas resigning from the guilds kept him from hiring Steven Spielberg as the director of Return of the Jedi. After David Cronenberg passed on Return of the Jedi, Lucas chose Richard Marquand, who was not a part of any American union guilds. While it kept Oldman out of the Star Wars franchise, it did give an opportunity to Wood, who is now known the world over by fans of the series.
Interestingly, had Oldman stayed on to voice General Grievous, it would have made 2005 a busy year for the actor. One month after Revenge of the Sith opened in theaters, Oldman starred in Batman Begins as Jim Gordon, a role he would go on to reprise in 2008's The Dark Knight and 2012's The Dark Knight Rises. Oldman also reprised his role as Sirius Black in 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Playing General Grievous in Star Wars would have made Oldman part of three major film franchises in one year.
Source: Happy Sad Confused via The Playlist
