The Ashton Kutcher Career Implosion

Oh, what a difference a year makes… or even six months…

It was just last summer when Hollywood It-boy Ashton Kutcher was being courted as Warner Brothers’ first choice to play Superman in their upcoming relaunch of that franchise. Kutcher had just come off the highly successful first season of PUNK’D and more importantly was making lots of headlines due to his relationship with Demi Moore who had just returned to the public spotlight.

Fanboys were immediately up in arms at the thought of this braying jackass portraying their beloved Superman. Luckily… Ashton wasn’t interested. He told The Face:

"If they didn’t expect me to do a sequel I’d do it. But you have to stop and think, can you name one other movie that Christopher Reeve did? It would have to be like when George Clooney did Batman. They should just let me do the one movie and it’d be the greatest four-hour movie ever"

Towards the end of the summer, Ashton-hype was at a fever pitch. Ashton’s film My Boss’ Daughter was released to some of the emptiest theaters and worst critical reviews of the year.

The year quickly got worse when Ashton was let go from a Steven Soderbergh production, because Soderbergh felt he wasn’t “up to par professionally” due to his high-profile relationship with Demi Moore and the annoying Tourette’s like persona on display weekly on Mtv’s PUNK’D. 

There wasn’t a whole lot of noise made about Ashton Kutcher’s departure from Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown. The official reasons given were due to scheduling conflict. However, according the the New York Post’s Page Six the reasons for the split are a little more intense:

"Cameron was unhappy with his read-throughs. Ashton did several and each one was worse and worse. Cameron even postponed production because he thought the readings would get better but they didn’t. At one point, Cameron suggested that Ashton take acting lessons. Soon after that, they both decided it would be best if Ashton was not in the movie."

Now Moviehole is reporting that Demi Moore’s production company is moving full speed ahead on a live-action Barbie movie. The first choice for the lead in the film (Ken) is .... Ethan Hawke! Yes, you read that right, Ashton isn’t even first choice for the male lead in his girlfriend’s vanity project.

It’s pretty incredible that someone can go from basically turning down Superman because they didn’t want to commit to sequels to being second choice to play Ken in a Barbie movie. But honestly, haven’t we all enjoyed watching it happen?