Michael Keaton was cast as Jack Shepard in Lost, but he backed out when the character was changed to survive the pilot episode.
By Douglas Helm
| Published 28 seconds ago
Michael Keaton is great in everything he’s in, and in an alternate universe, we might have seen him play Jack Shepard in Lost. Of course, that role ended up going to Matthew Fox, and the rest is history. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Keaton revealed that the original plan was for Jack to die at the end of the pilot, so he decided to back out when the plans changed, and he’d have to commit to a full season.
It’s a good thing Michael Keaton turned down the role in Lost, since the series ran from 2004 to 2010. If he didn’t want to be in a role for more than one episode, he would have been sorely disappointed. Of course, the series also became one of the most talked-about and popular TV shows of all time, so he might not have minded that part.
Find out how it all went wrong for Lost in our video deep-dive into the show.
With that being said, Michael Keaton’s 2004 to 2010 output certainly wasn’t the peak of his career, so Lost might not have been a bad move. However, Keaton would have a late-career Renaissance with numerous prestige movies in the late 2010s, starting with Alejandro G. Inarritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) in 2014. The film was oddly adjacent to Keaton’s career, as it followed a former superhero actor looking to revitalize his acting career with a prestigious Broadway play.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) won four Oscars and earned Michael Keaton a Best Actor nomination. If Keaton had been in Lost, perhaps he would have missed out on this role of a lifetime. Keaton would follow up Birdman with other fantastic films like Spotlight and The Founder.
Matthew Fox as Jack on Lost
If Michael Keaton had played Jack on Lost, it’s very possible that he could have earned himself an Emmy. He got the chance to make up for that by starring in the Hulu opioid epidemic drama Dopesick, which earned him an Outstanding Lead Actor Emmy. Keaton would also return to the world of superheroes in the MCU’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, though he would be playing the villain this time around.
Michael Keaton played Adrian Toomes, aka the Vulture, in the MCU, and he’s one of the few villains who managed not to die in their first appearance. While missing out on a massive show like Lost might be a bummer, being in one of the biggest and most profitable film franchises of all time is a pretty good consolation prize.