Wonder Woman director helped secret recasting for All the Money in the World

Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins pulled off two incredible feats this year. One was turning out one of Warner Bros.’ most successful DC superhero films to date, and the other was aiding Ridley Scott‘s ambitious undercover recasting for All the Money in the World.

Screenwriter David Scarpa, who adapted the screenplay for Scott’s film off the book by John Pearson, revealed to The Hollywood Reporter the secret part Jenkins played in replacing Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer. “If it gets out, and we don’t cast this and we can’t make it happen, the movie is dead,” Scarpa recalled.

Spacey was initially cast as the role of oil magnate J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World. After principal photography had already wrapped, numerous accusations of sexual misconduct came out against the House of Cards actor, leading Scott to recast the role and execute hasty reshoots before the film’s December release date.

“When a call goes out to the casting agencies, ‘Ridley Scott is looking for an actor to play a 90-year-old guy,’ pretty much everybody knows what movie that is,” Scarpa explained. So they turned to Jenkins, who was working with her screenwriter husband, Sam Sheridan, on TNT’s One Day She’ll Darken series.

“Ridley’s casting agents basically asked if they could send the call out for the part under their production’s name,” Scarpa said. “So basically it was, ‘Patty Jenkins is looking for a 90-year-old guy.’ That was basically how they were able to do it. There was a lot of this sort of… crafty maneuvers in order to make this thing come off.”

As Scott previously explained to EW in an interview, the first call you make in a situation like this is determining who you want for the role — and Plummer had already been in considerations for Getty, whose real-life grandson was famously kidnapped for ransom.

“It was better to do it like this,” the director said of keeping the recasting quiet, “because once you inform the system, it’s everywhere. Once two people know what it’s about, bang, it’s all out there.”

Starring Michelle Williams, Mark Wahlberg, Charlie Plummer, and Romain Duris, All the Money in the World will now open in theaters on Dec. 25, backed by three Golden Globe nominations.