Brad Pitt Was Almost in Inception—Here's What Went Wrong
Brad Pitt has a long history of passing on movies that go on to become massive hits. The Matrix. The Bourne Identity. American Psycho. And if that's not enough, go ahead and add Inception to the pile.
Back in 2010, when Christopher Nolan was finally cashing in his Dark Knight clout to make a mind-bending sci-fi action film about dream heists, Warner Bros gave him the green light. The budget? $160 million. The concept? So secretive, actors were only allowed to read the script under surveillance.
Pitt was reportedly one of the first actors offered the lead role. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Nolan handed him the script with a condition: respond within 48 hours, or the role would go to someone else.
Brad never called back.
The silence was loud enough that Nolan moved on—first to Will Smith, who read the script and famously said he "didn't get it."
Only after that did Nolan land on Leonardo DiCaprio, who signed on as Dom Cobb and spent the next decade doing press tours where he openly admitted he still didn't understand the plot.
It's not clear why Pitt ghosted Nolan. Maybe it was the sci-fi. Maybe he was just busy. But if you look at his schedule, that excuse doesn't hold much water. In 2009, when Inception was filming, Pitt's only major acting job was in Inglourious Basterds—which had already wrapped. In 2010, he voiced a cartoon superhero in Megamind. That's it.
Here's what Pitt missed:
- Inception earned $826.8 million worldwide
- Budget: $160 million
- 8 Academy Award nominations
- 4 Oscar wins
Meanwhile, Pitt didn't show up in a live-action film again until The Tree of Life in 2011. Not exactly a scheduling conflict.
This wasn't even the first time Pitt almost teamed up with Nolan. He apparently read the script for Memento back in the early 2000s and was interested—before the role eventually went to Guy Pearce. So that's two near-misses with Nolan, both times resulting in major cult or critical hits.
Pitt's never commented publicly on why he skipped Inception. But if Will Smith noped out because he "didn't get it," and DiCaprio couldn't explain it after starring in it, it's safe to assume Pitt might've read a few pages and decided he didn't feel like chasing logic through three levels of dream geometry.
Now that Oppenheimer has made Nolan the first director in 20 years to win Best Picture with a blockbuster, you have to wonder: if Nolan calls Pitt again… will he finally pick up?