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Matt Damon collaborated with filmmaker Ridley Scott for the first time for the 2015 feature The Martian. But the sci-fi project most likely would’ve looked a lot different if it wasn’t for a particular supervillain feature.

Matt Damon’s ‘The Martian’ had to swap directors because of this supervillain team-up movie

Matt Damon posing at the Golden Globes in a suit.
Matt Damon | Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Damon’s 2015 movie The Martian famously saw the actor playing a stranded astronaut on a barren planet. Although it was initially directed by Ridley Scott, Scott wasn’t the first person tapped to direct the film. The project initially went to the film’s screenwriter Drew Goddard, who brought The Martian to Damon’s attention. Goddard once asserted that he wrote the acclaimed blockbuster simply because he loved the book it was based on, which was written by Andy Weir.

“I read Andy’s book and I loved it. I started from that. I tend to write down all that I love about it: sometimes that’s scenes, sometimes that’s moments, sometimes that’s themes, and then you just roll up your sleeves and get to work and say, ‘Now, let’s forget all of this and concentrate on making the best movie,’” Goddard once told The Credits.

Goddard met with the Good Will Hunting star, who was under the impression he’d remain on as filmmaker. But another project ended up pulling the writer away from The Martian.

“Drew Goddard, who wrote it, was supposed to direct it. I went and met with Drew and was considering doing it. But then he got Sinister Six, which is a comic book thing he had wanted to do. It was like his dream job. So he said, ‘Well, okay, I can’t do The Martian. Or I can do The Martian in like a year.’ I said, ‘Okay,’” Damon recalled in an interview with Maclean’s.

The Sinister Six was supposed to be Sony’s spin-off to their Amazing Spider-Man movies, and would’ve focused on the villains in the web-slinger’s rogues gallery. However, that project would eventually fall through. Meanwhile, The Martian found a new filmmaker to helm the adaptation in director Ridley Scott, who’s quite familiar with space movies.

“Then I got a phone call that Ridley had been sent the script and like[d] it. I raced over and met with Ridley. It was a five-minute meeting. We sat down and he goes, ‘The script is great. I mean it’s f***ing great. Why the f*** aren’t we making this movie?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know!’”

‘The Martian’ might not have existed if it wasn’t for Matt Damon

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The Bourne Identity star might’ve been the reason that the sci-fi feature even made it off the ground. Picturing Damon in the role was a change of pace for Goddard, who didn’t like to imagine other actors while writing films. But Damon was an exception.

“In general, I don’t when I’m writing because I like to just think about the characters. But once we got the first draft done, then real casting discussions started, and Matt Damon was always at the top of our list. Honestly, if he hadn’t said yes, I don’t know what we would have done. We may not have had a movie, quite frankly,” Goddard once told The Hollywood Reporter.

However, that wasn’t the only reason why Goddard was worried about The Martian hitting theaters. Around the time of the film’s debut, there were two other similar movies audiences would grow very familiar with. Interstellar and especially Gravity were both movies that featured astronauts stranded in space. To Goddard, this made The Martian’s success seem even less likely.

“We were like, ‘Oh f***, are we dead?’” Goddard told Esquire.

But Goddard realized The Martian wasn’t like Gravity or Interstellar at all, and could thrive on its own merits.

“We were a different movie. Same with Interstellar. But it was all cosmetic similarities. The truth is, whenever you work on something in Hollywood, you’re going to hear a report that someone is making the exact same movie. You just have to make it your own. Andy’s book was so special and so unique, it would get us through this,” Goddard said.