Liam Neeson Replaced Succession Actor Brian Cox In This 2000s Fantasy Movie

Scottish actor Brian Cox attracted significant acclaim for his performance on HBO dramedy "Succession." Cox played Logan Roy, a reactionary media baron facing down his own mortality and the prospect of his incompetent children inheriting his empire. Logan was a perfect late-in-life role for a Shakespearean like Cox; he's like King Lear melded with Rupert Murdoch. ("Succession" was actually spun out of creator Jesse Armstrong's unfilmed screenplay about the Murdoch family.)

But Cox, who's in his 80s, has been acting a long time. I knew who he was well before "Succession" thanks to his role as Colonel William Stryker in "X2: X-Men United" and as CIA chief Ward Abbott in the Jason Bourne films. Over the years, he's become one of my favorite character actors. His performance in "Adaptation" as screenwriting guru Robert McKee who excoriates Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage)? One of the most gutbusting movie scenes ever.

But besides "X-Men" and "Bourne," Cox almost joined another 2000s blockbuster franchise: Disney's "The Chronicles of Narnia." As reported in 2004, Cox was set to voice Aslan, the godly lion, in the first film "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." "Brian has an amazing resonance to his voice, a certain majesty, which suits Aslan perfectly," commented producer Mark Johnson at the time. "I've always found Brian to be so versatile... we first talked to Brian about the role of Aslan maybe nine months ago, and I'm so glad it worked out."

Except in the end, it didn't! Cox was replaced in the movie by Liam Neeson. Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph in 2022, Cox recalled: "The director [Andrew Adamson] took me to one side and said, 'Brian, I'm going to have to let you go', and that was it. The first time and only time I've ever been fired."

Speaking to USA Today in 2005, Andrew Adamson said: "I love Brian but we made a mistake. It has to do with the size of the lion and finding the right voice quality." They found the right voice quality in Neeson. 

"When I was approached to be the voice of [Aslan], I took it very seriously," Neeson said during the press tour for the third "Narnia" film, 2010's "Voyage of the Dawn Treader." Neeson even went on African safaris to observe wild lions, hoping to grasp why "Chronicles of Narnia" author C. S. Lewis specifically chose to make Aslan a lion and not some other majestic animal. 

Lewis was a Christian and Aslan is a clear Christ allegory. In "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," he even heroically gives himself up to be sacrificed, but is then resurrected. Neeson's voice has a commanding authority, but also paternal kindness, and you need that balance for a benevolent godly character like Aslan. Cox's voice is harsher; it definitely radiates authority, but kindness? Not often. Cox himself identified this difference to the Belfast Telegraph, saying "[Neeson's] got that great Northern Irish softness that really worked, whereas I was doing it more 'me'. Creatively, it was the right decision."

The one counterpoint is Cox in Spike Lee's "25th Hour," where he plays James Brogan, father of prison-bound lead Monty (Edward Norton). The entire ending of the film rests on Cox's voiceover as he offers to help his son escape, and paints the picture of the kind of life Monty can have if they do so. "Succession" fans might be shocked to watch "25th Hour" and see Cox play a father with that much love in his heart.