From Sergio Leone to Peter Bogdanovich, some legendary directors were offered The Godfather before Francis Ford Coppola agreed to do it. Coppola was initially hesitant to direct The Godfather, because he found Mario Puzo’s source novel to be a shallow and dimensionless portrayal of the mafia. However, upon revisiting the book, he found more thematic depth in the story and figured out what his approach would be. Rather than making The Godfather as a typical gangster movie, Coppola made it as a family drama about the tensions and conflicts within a тιԍнт-knit Italian-American family, which he knew all about.

This is what made The Godfather so special, and why The Godfather still holds up today. Coppola’s approach transcended the crime genre and presented a universal family dynamic that everybody could relate to, whether they were affiliated with the mob or not. But Coppola almost didn’t direct the film — he was far from Paramount’s first choice. At least eight other filmmakers were offered the job before Coppola, but they all turned it down, either due to scheduling conflicts or objections to the violent material. The Godfather would’ve turned out very differently if one of these directors had done it.

8

Sergio Leone

Paramount’s first choice to direct The Godfather was Sergio Leone (via the New York Times). The studio executives were convinced that their last mafia movie, The Brotherhood, had failed at the box office because none of its cast and crew were of Italian descent, so they were determined to get an Italian filmmaker to helm The Godfather. Leone is best known as a pioneer of the spaghetti western genre, having helmed such trailblazing classics as A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West.

However, Leone turned down the offer, because he was working on his own gangster movie, Once Upon a Time in America. Leone wanted to deconstruct the Hollywood gangster myth in a way he wouldn’t have been able to do with The Godfather. Unfortunately, Leone’s pᴀssion project languished in development hell for over a decade and Once Upon a Time in America didn’t see the light of day until 1984, a full 12 years after The Godfather arrived in theaters. Leone’s take on The Godfather probably would’ve been very extravagant and operatic, and even bloodier than Coppola’s version.

7

Peter Bogdanovich

After Leone turned down the job, Paramount offered The Godfather to Peter Bogdanovich, but Bogdanovich had even less interest than Leone (via The Guardian). Bogdanovich said that he was “so flippant” in rejecting the project that he didn’t even realize it was The Godfather until a decade later. As soon as he heard that it was about the mafia, he turned it down, because he had no proclivity to make a gangster movie. Bogdanovich said that if he did take the job, his Godfather would’ve been “a whole different picture” — he would’ve cast Edward G. Robinson as Don Vito Corleone.

At the time, Bogdanovich had burst onto the scene with his low-budget debut feature Targets and was getting a lot of buzz for his sophomore directorial effort, The Last Picture Show, which would ultimately earn him Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Instead of making The Godfather, Bogdanovich directed the old-school screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc? and the heartfelt father-daughter road movie Paper Moon, now considered to be two of the finest films of the 1970s. It was much better to get that double whammy than a half-hearted version of The Godfather for a paycheck.

6

Peter Yates

After Leone and Bogdanovich turned it down, The Godfather was offered to at least eight more filmmakers (via CBS News) before Coppola finally agreed to direct it. One of the directors who turned it down was Peter Yates, best known for directing the Steve McQueen police thriller Bullitt. Yates also helmed the heist film Robbery, which marked his big break (and led to him getting the job directing Bullitt), the coming-of-age dramedy Breaking Away, and the science fantasy cult classic Krull.

Yates likely would’ve directed The Godfather more as a straightforward action movie. His approach to scenes like Michael killing McCluskey in the restaurant and Sonny getting gunned down at the toll booth would’ve been a sensationalist spectacle like Bullitt’s iconic car chase. Coppola’s grounded, realistic approach to the violence was much more unnerving and impactful.

5

Otto Preminger

Otto Preminger similarly turned down The Godfather after being offered the job. Preminger is one of the most celebrated directors in Hollywood history, particularly in the film noir genre. While Bogdanovich was relatively new to the scene when The Godfather was in development, Preminger had been a renowned filmmaker for decades. After emigrating to the U.S. in the mid-1930s, Preminger first earned widespread acclaim for his iconic 1944 noir Laura.

If he’d actually taken an interest in the project, Preminger would’ve been a great choice for The Godfather. He was notorious for tackling taboo subject matter in mainstream movies under the strict regulations of the Hays Code. He depicted drug addiction in 1955’s The Man with the Golden Arm, Sєxual ᴀssault in 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder, and homoSєxuality in 1962’s Advise & Consent. It would’ve been interesting to see what he’d do with the grim subject matter and uncompromising plot twists of The Godfather.

4

Richard Brooks

Paramount asked Richard Brooks to direct The Godfather, but he also turned it down. Brooks dabbled in various genres throughout his career — he directed the classic western The Professionals, he wrote the iconic film noir The Killers, and he turned Truman Capote’s true-crime book In Cold Blood into a chilling cinematic thriller — but he was primarily known for directing straightforward character-driven dramas. He adapted Blackboard Jungle, The Brothers Karamazov, and Cat on a H๏τ Tin Roof for the screen.

What made Coppola’s direction of The Godfather so effective and subversive is that he approached the characters as real, relatable, three-dimensional human beings, not as genre archetypes. Brooks’ past work suggests he would’ve taken a similar approach and focused on the people behind the tropes. Coppola’s version of The Godfather is perfect, but Brooks’ would’ve been great, too.

3

Franklin J. Schaffner

Franklin J. Schaffner is another director who was offered The Godfather and turned it down. Schaffner was a versatile filmmaker who helmed all kinds of movies: he directed Planet of the Apes, the bonkers sci-fi adventure about astronauts stranded on a mysterious world full of talking monkeys; Nicholas and Alexandra, a romantic drama about the last ruling Russian monarch and his wife; Papillon, chronicling a real-life prison break; and The Boys from Brazil, a conspiracy thriller about a Nazi hunter. The Godfather would’ve seen him explore yet another genre.

Schaffner won the Academy Award for Best Director for helming the military biopic Patton (which, coincidentally enough, was co-written by Coppola right before he tackled The Godfather). He clearly had the filmmaking chops to do Puzo’s crime saga justice on the big screen. But Schaffner’s take on The Godfather might have turned out pretty dry and slow-paced, like Patton. Coppola’s film isn’t the most rapidly paced movie, but it moves a lot quicker than Schaffner’s war epic.

2

Costa-Gavras

Paramount offered The Godfather to Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras, but he turned it down. At the time, Costa-Gavras was best known for his 1969 political thriller Z, a thinly veiled dramatization of the 1963 ᴀssᴀssination of Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1982, he won the Palme d’Or for Missing, a cinematic chronicle of the disappearance of American journalist Charles Horman following the Chilean coup of 1973. Costa-Gavras has only made six movies in English; if he’d made The Godfather, it would’ve been seven.

If Costa-Gavras had directed The Godfather, he probably would’ve leaned more into the political elements. Where Coppola focused on the family dynamics, Costa-Gavras would’ve focused more on capitalism and police corruption and the politics of organized crime. It would’ve been just as interesting, but it would’ve been a very different movie.

1

Arthur Penn

Arthur Penn also turned down the chance to direct The Godfather after being offered the job. Penn was one of the founding fathers of the American New Wave, a movement that allowed a film like The Godfather to get made in the first place. Throughout his career, Penn directed such films as the prison drama The Chase, the Arlo Guthrie comedy Alice’s Restaurant, and the revisionist western Little Big Man. He also directed one of the earliest New Hollywood movies, 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, which is surely the reason he was offered The Godfather.

By making a pair of bank robbers the protagonists, Bonnie and Clyde established the New Hollywood trend of blurring the line between heroes and villains. This would’ve made Penn a great choice to direct The Godfather, a story that relies on the audience empathizing with despicable criminals. Penn could’ve gotten audiences to understand Michael Corleone the same way he got them invested in the ill-fated love story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Coppola ended up being the best choice for The Godfather, but it’s interesting to imagine how the movie would’ve turned out with someone else at the helm.

Source: New York Times, The Guardian, CBS News