‘Pulp Fiction’ Would Have Been a Very Different Movie if Quentin Tarantino Got His First Choice For the Cast

Pulp Fiction is one of my favorite movies of all time. Every choice Quentin Tarantino made works together to produce a film that’s smart, funny, intriguing and above all else showcase incredibly performances from perfectly-cast actors.

But it turns out that a lot of the stars of the film weren’t Tarantino’s first choices.

Right off the bat, imagining anyone other Sam Jackson as Jules just seems insane, but Tarantino actually wrote the role for Lawrence Fishburn. Considering Pulp Fiction was Jackson’s big break, we could live in a very different world if QT got his first choice here. It was only a few years after Pulp Fiction that Bryan Hitch drew Jackson as Nick Fury in The Ultimates, something that directly lead to Jackson being cast as the character in Iron Man and subsequent MCU films.

It really wasn’t a secret that Vincent Vega was written for Michael Madsen, who had played Vic Vega in Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino had John Travolta as his second choice and it was certainly an inspired second choice. His on-screen chemistry with Jackson was off the charts and without them opening the movie I don’t know if the audience would have been drawn in the same way.

One interesting thing is that Tarantino didn’t seem to have any real idea who he wanted to play Mia Wallace, a pretty important character who would eventually be played by Uma Thurman. Uma wasn’t even on the list for Mia, but Tarantino liked her so much he wrote the part of The Bride in Kill Bill for her.

Same for Bruce Willis, who wasn’t on the list as Butch, which was written for Matt Dillon. Bruce Willis seems like a casting coup in comparison.

Pulp Fiction could have been a very different movie if Tarantino had his first picks, and it’s hard to imagine what it would have been like, but I think in the end he’d have still made a great movie. Just David Hasselhoff would be playing Nick Fury in the MCU.