The Clint Eastwood Box Office Hit That Almost Starred Tom Selleck

If you're Clint Eastwood and you're thinking of leaving the action genre after decades of being one of the most recognizable and celebrated movie heroes of all time, you better make sure you go out with a bang. Luckily, Eastwood's last action movie role has a 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Now, in fairness, the famed actor would go on to star in movies that had their share of action, but 1993's "In the Line of Fire" felt like the last fully-fledged Clint Eastwood actioner, and it's a doozy.

After winning Best Picture and Best Director at the 1993 Oscars for "Unforgiven," Eastwood returned to the director's chair with "A Perfect World," his highly anticipated directorial follow-up to "Unforgiven" which debuted in November that same year. The Kevin Costner-led crime drama was yet another critical hit for Eastwood, but it wasn't quite the box office success that "In the Line of Fire," a political action thriller from director Wolfgang Petersen ("Das Boot," "The NeverEnding Story"), had been just a few months prior.

In the film, Eastwood played Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan, the only remaining active duty agent who was part of the detail assigned to President John F. Kennedy on the day of his assassination. His failure to protect the commander in chief on that day drove Horrigan to alcoholism, which ultimately cost him his family. But after investigating a complaint about a tenant who has abandoned his apartment, Horrigan uncovers a plot by an ex-CIA assassin (John Malkovich) to kill the President and sees an opportunity to make amends for his past failure. He then gets himself placed on the President's protective detail in an attempt to thwart the mysterious assassin's plans.

Petersen's taut actioner was a hit both critically and commercially. The German filmmaker proved adept at such fare, directing Harrison Ford in one of his best action outings, "Air Force One," a few years later. With "In the Line of Fire," however, he ensured Eastwood delivered a fitting action swan song, with Horrigan representing one of Eastwood's greatest roles. But it seems the movie wasn't necessarily designed as such, and actually started as a project created for a very different star.

Tom Selleck almost played a Disney version of Frank Horrigan

"In the Line of Fire" started as an idea in the mind of producer Jeff Apple, who had been trying to get the movie made since the early 1980s. As a boy, Apple had seen Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in person and had a vivid memory of his secret service detail. Ever since, he'd wanted to make a move about the men who protect the President, and enlisted a couple of writers to make it happen. Jeff Maguire was the man who finally cracked the screenplay, but before Castle Rock Entertainment and Columbia Pictures agreed to produce and distribute respectively, Apple and Maguire shopped the script around. This included an attempt to sell Disney on the idea of the film as a TV movie starring the great Tom Selleck. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a treatment for this Selleck-starring version of "In the Line of Fire" was rejected by Disney, before the final script prompted a bidding war that Castle Rock won for seven figures.

Selleck had made his name playing Thomas Magnum in CBS's "Magnum, P.I." which ran from 1980 to 1988. At the time Apple and Maguire were pitching him as the lead in a TV movie version of "In the Line of Fire," Selleck was at the height of his powers. As such, Disney surely would have been amenable to an action movie starring Thomas Magnum himself, but for whatever reason it never came to pass. Interestingly enough, this wasn't the only big role Selleck missed out on that decade. The "Magnum, P.I." star was cast as Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (still the best Indiana Jones movie), but his CBS show wouldn't release him from his contract, leading to his hasty exit from Steven Spielberg's adventure classic that prompted rushed redesigns for Harrison Ford.

Clint Eastwood was the right man for the job

According to the Los Angeles Times, Tom Selleck wasn't the only other star who had a chance at playing Frank Horrigan. "In the Line of Fire" scripts were sent to Robert Redford, Sean Connery, and Warren Beatty before Clint Eastwood came onboard. When the movie finally did arrive, Selleck himself had recently starred in the commercial and critical disappointment that was "Mr. Baseball," and didn't appear in another film until 1995.

But seeing as "In the Line of Fire" proved to be a fitting farewell to the action genre for Eastwood, it seems things worked out for the best. What's more, the film was a critical and commercial success, grossing $187.3 million against a $40 million production budget. Based on the critical response, it's fair to say that much of this success was down to the fact that Eastwood was the star. Roger Ebert called the film "a smart, tense, well-made thriller" and "Eastwood's best in the genre since 'Tightrope'," while Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times noted how "the film trades so heavily on Eastwood's presence that it is impossible to imagine it with anyone else in the starring role."

"In the Line of Fire" earned three nominations at the 66th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor (John Malkovich), Best Film Editing (Anne V. Coates), and Best Original Screenplay (Jeff Maguire). On top of all that, it seems Maguire might not have received that honor had Eastwood declined to star. According to THR, the actor convinced Columbia execs to keep Maguire on the project after some disagreement about the addition of an explosion to the finale. As the writer remembered it, Eastwood told him, "You won't be having any more trouble from them."

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