Face/Off Werb and Michael Colleary tried to sell to a studio from as early as 1990. The first actors who were chosen to play Sean Archer and Castor Troy were Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger respectively but John Woo instead hired John Travolta and Nicolas Cage to play those characters. It took numerous studios, producers and rewrites before John Woo became attached several years later. For the Archer character, Woo considered casting either Michael Douglas or Jean-Claude Van Damme with whom he had worked in "Hard Target". When the film was eventually made, Douglas served as an executive producer. Werb and
Face/Off and Best On-Screen Duo for Travolta and Cage. "Face/Off" is said to have inspired "Infernal Affairs". However, "Infernal Affairs" director Andrew Lau wanted to have a more realistic situation; instead of a physical face change, Lau wanted to have the characters swap identities. The concept of "bian lian" or "change face", a technique traditionally used in Chinese opera, may have been used here to depict the fluid and seamless morph of Chen and Lau's characters' identities between the "good" and "bad" sides. "Infernal Affairs" in turn has spawned several adaptations, notably "The Departed" directed by Martin Scorsese which won the