Alan Tudyk has claimed he was removed from I, Robot’s promotional trail after testing better than Will Smith in early screenings.
Tudyk starred in the 2004 sci-fi thriller as Sonny, a robot accused of murder, and used motion-capture to pull off the CGI role.
According to the actor, early viewers of the film preferred his character to Smith’s Del Spooner, a robot-hating homicide detective tasked with solving the murder Sonny is accused of.
“A lot of people didn’t know I did Sonny and there’s a reason for that,” Tudyk said on Toon’d In with Jim Cummings.
“They were doing test audiences with the movie and they score the characters and I got word back, ‘Alan, you’re testing higher than Will Smith.’”
Tudyk, 54, continued: “Then I was gone. I was gone. There was no publicity and my name was not mentioned.”
The Dodgeball actor said he “was so shocked” and thought: “But wait, nobody’s going to know that I [play the robot].’”
Tudyk added that he “put a lot into” the performance, stating, “At the time, I was very upset.”
The Independent has contacted 20th Century Fox and Smith for comment.
I, Robot, based on Isaac Asimov’s book of the same name, arrived at the height of Smith’s film career.
After ending the 1990s with the flop Wild Wild West, he bounced back with roles in Oscar-nominated boxing biopic Ali (2001), Michael Bay sequel Bad Boys II (2003) and romantic comedy Hitch (2005).
His role in I, Robot was originally offered to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Denzel Washington who turned it down.
At the time of his casting, Tudyk was best known for appearing in the Heath Ledger film A Knight’s Tale (2001) as well as short-lived cult series Firefly (2002-03).
He appeared as Steve the Pirate in the comedy Dodgeball in the same year that I, Robot was released, and went on to play droid K-2SO in the Star Wars spin-off Rogue One (2016) and its prequel series Andor nine years later.
In 2024, an update to Tesla’s Optimus robot – an AI-powered humanoid – led to I, Robot comparisons.
Initially unveiled in 2022, the bot was upgraded to include quicker walking speeds, improved hand mobility and tactile sensors.
In videos played at the event, Optimus was shown watering plants, bringing in groceries and serving drinks.
“This will be the biggest product ever of any kind,” Musk boldly told the audience, predicting that once made publicly available, the units would cost around $20,000 to $30,000.
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