The Notebook Was Nearly Adapted By A Divisive Horror Movie Director

All it takes is one director to change the entire vision of a film for better or worse. Long before Sam Raimi swung with "Spider-Man," James Cameron was considering giving his own take on the wall-crawler a go. There was also a time when Steven Spielberg was the first choice to give us a live-action run at "Harry Potter" (even though he's glad he didn't). There was one occasion, however, when the Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams-starring tearjerker "The Notebook" was set to be handled by an, at that point, relatively unknown director. Even stranger, the reason he was a little too busy for the love story for the ages was that he was about to break big in a horror that would label him as the all-new Master of Suspense.

During an appearance on "Good Morning America" (via Entertainment Weekly), author Nicholas Sparks, whose book "The Notebook" was adapted from, revealed who was in the running for originally handling the romantic story that spanned decades before Nick Cassavetes took the job. "Years ago, back in the '90s, when they were doing the script for 'The Notebook,'" Sparks recalled, "one of the writers they approached to adapt 'The Notebook' for the screen: M. Night Shyamalan. You know why he couldn't do it? 'Cause he was doing 'The Sixth Sense.'" That's not the only wild "what if" that got lost in the pages of "The Notebook," though, as there were some interesting potential casting choices before they settled on the final dynamite double-act.

There was an interesting collection of stars that were considered for "The Notebook" that showed just how long the project had been in development and passed around before they found the winning pair of Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams as Noah Calhoun and Allie Hamilton, respectively. Before Gosling got the call, the likes of Tom Cruise and Hayden Christensen were considered for the part, with George Clooney even coming close to signing on for the project, with Paul Newman approached to play the older version. That was until Clooney backed out after accepting that neither he nor the icon that would be taking over from him looked remotely alike.

As for Allie, Britney Spears, Jennifer Love-Hewitt, Amy Adams, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, and Claire Danes were all reported to have been in the running for the role before McAdams got the gig. "When Miss McAdams came in and read, it was apparent that she was the one," confessed Cassavetes in a DVD documentary. While there's certainly an interesting collection of "what ifs?" with all these names considered, let's just be glad that theirs and Shyamalan never ended up with "The Notebook," as we might've missed out on what is undeniably one of the greatest romance movies ever made.