Joseph Gordon-Levitt replaces James McAvoy in cancer comedy

Brad Sturdivant March 3rd, 2010

James McAvoy has dropped out of the upcoming, still untitled cancer comedy and has been replaced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The other stars attached remain with the film and include Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston and Philip Baker Hall. Jonathan Levine will be directing and Will Reiser wrote the script, based off his real life experiences as he battled cancer.

I have some very conflicting emotions about this because McAvoy is one of my favorite actors and I was looking forward to a role that would give him the chance to show off his charm and charisma. But I also really like Joseph Gordon-Levitt. My only question about Levitt is how he’ll play off of Seth Rogen. That seems like an odd pairing.

This is very strange since McAvoy had just recently talked about how excited he was about the project and “circumstances beyond his control” is a unique term to describe why an actor has left a film. It should also be noted that rumors have already started to surface that one of the reasons McAvoy dropped out is because he’s been cast as Bilbo Baggins in Guillermo Del Toro’s THE HOBBIT. As of right now, that’s not true and there’s not validity to that rumor whatsoever. My guess is that McAvoy made a commitment to a project that didn’t have a start date and the start date happened to coincide with the cancer film.