George Clooney revealed that Mark Wahlberg and Johnny Depp are among actors who now “regret” not joining the cast of Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 heist comedy “Ocean’s Eleven.”
Clooney — who starred in the film alongside the likes of Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Andy Garcia and Julia Roberts — joined Soderbergh at TCM Film Festival, where he opened up about the two passing on roles in the film, Entertainment Weekly reported.
“People really wanted to work with Steven,” said Clooney, who referred to the filmmaker’s prior movies “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic.”
“Some very famous people told us to fuck right off. We went to their homes and sat with them.”
“Mark Wahlberg’s one of ’em. He said it,” replied TCM host Ben Mankiewicz.
“Johnny Depp,” Clooney continued. “There were others. The brothers [Luke and] Owen Wilson. Oh, they regret it now, yeah, ‘Oh I regret it.’ I regret doing fucking ‘Batman.’”
Watch more from Soderbergh and Clooney below.
Wahlberg dropped out of the film “due to scheduling conflicts,” ABC News reported at the time. Wahlberg, who was set to play Linus Caldwell in the movie, told Zoo Today magazine back in 2008 that it was “well worth” skipping the project because “the second one sucked.”
“People tell George Clooney it’s great, but we all know it sucked,” Wahlberg said.
“I made two bad movies instead — ‘Planet Of The Apes’ and ‘The Truth About Charlie’ — but doing that was better than sitting with Brad and George, telling the press how great everybody is! ‘We were in Europe, George was funny, then we had some wine ...’ — that’s not for me. I do love those guys, but I had to step out on my own.”
Clooney told E! News in 2012 that he and Soderbergh sat down with Depp ahead of the film, although the actor passed on the part as it “was for a Brit and he didn’t want to do it.”
The roles of the Malloy twins were expected to go to Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson, but the two were already tasked to work on Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Variety reported in 2000.