Movies
Kevin Spacey and John Travolta Could Have Starred in ‘Judgment Night’
This past Saturday night, Cinepocalypse played host to a very special 25th-anniversary screening of Judgment Night, directed by Elm Street 5 and Predator 2‘s Stephen Hopkins.
The 1993 masterpiece, about four friends who get lost in the streets of Chicago on their way to a boxing match, boasted one of cinemas best ensembles: Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeremy Piven, and Stephen Dorff, with Denis Leary making his feature debut as the film’s antagonist. This could have been extraordinarily different, Hopkins revealed to the audience during the film’s Q+A:
“[This was] Denis’ first film and actually before we cast Denis it was almost Kevin Spacey in that role,” said Hopkins, resulting in audible gasps from the audience. “I met him on Broadway, and he was so creepy and wonderful,” he added, which caused the theatre to erupt into laughter. He further explained that Leary was older when he finally became famous and had “lived an entire life” before his newfound fame. “In the end, Denis just had this anger.”
Emilio Estevez, Denis Leary, and Erik Schrody in Judgment Night (1993)
Gesturing to the recent allegations against Spacey, Hopkins also reminisced Piven’s performance: “I decided to watch the first bit of it again…I forgot how great Jeremy Piven is. He’s so unlikeable,” he recalls before sending the audience into cheers with the adding of, “When he’s thrown off that fucking roof…”
But that wasn’t the only bombshell revealed by Hopkins all of these years later. The director shared that they had originally wanted John Travolta for the lead role.
“Emilio is someone I knew for a while – it was almost John Travolta in that role, but no one thought [the audience would] go and see a John Travolta film. This was before Pulp [Fiction],” he clarifies.
“When he was younger, he did these edgy movies,” Hopkins added when someone joked that this film followed Mighty Ducks. “His father was an edgy, interesting actor. The great thing about Emilio is he’s a very smart guy and a really strong, real person. Emilio is a badass. He’s a really, really tough bloke in real life.”
Thankfully, fate found a way to bring together this perfect cast and has left us with one of the most underappreciated, yet exemplary thrillers in film history.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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