10 Movies That Had Completely Different First Drafts

Making movies is hard work. Though the best films tend to make the process look easy, while lesser ones look like no effort was put in at all, the truth is usually not quite so clear cut. The folks behind an awful movie might have started with a strong idea and good intentions but somehow lost sight of what worked and what didn't. Those who bring us awesome movies, on the other hand, might have begun with a stinker and then polished it until it shined. It's a common process, then, for movies to transform a lot over the development process - but some change more than others. Certain films over the years have been altered in such massive ways throughout production that they were unrecognizable by the end of it. Sometimes for the best, sometimes for the worst. Here, then, are 10 classic movies that had mind-blowingly different first drafts, having been changed so much during development that they ended up nothing like they were when the idea was first sprung. 10) The LEGO Movie Though everyone was expecting it to be a shameless cash-grab, The LEGO Movie, well, in one sense still was a shameless cash grab, at least had a ton of imagination and creativity. As you might remember, the two stars of the show are the so-called Special One Emmet, who's actually a cheerful but totally uncreative conformist, while the other is LEGO Batman himself, a spot-on comedic take on the modern brooding Dark Knight. In the original version of the movie, however, one of these characters is the complete opposite while the other is totally absent. Emmet started life as someone too creative to fit into normal LEGO life - for example, he builds a massive smiley face when working at the construction site and gets sent to jail for it. LEGO Batman, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found in the original draft. Instead, his role as celebrity supporting character was filled by LEGO Indiana Jones. His involvement culminated in the meeting of LEGO Indy and LEGO Han, bringing together Harrison Ford's two iconic characters. In LEGO form. In another universe somewhere, The LEGO Indiana Jones Movie is about to arrive in cinemas. 9) Groundhog Day This February 3rd, you may well have rewatched Groundhog Day for the 100th time (I know I did). With one of Bill Murray's finest performances and a spot-on script that weaves laugh-out-loud comedy, tragedy and romance together, it's a bonafide classic and has soaked into popular culture quite a bit ever since. Earlier drafts of the movie were significantly different, however. For instance, Danny Rubin's initial draft began in media res with Murray's character Phil Connors already stuck in the time loop in Punxsutawney. Instead of the happy ending of the eventual movie, it would have finished with Phil at his wit's end and killing himself... only to wake up again in the loop. The final sting would have been Rita waking up too and revealing that she was stuck in her own time loop. In the movie's second draft, producers asked Rubin to add in an explanation for why Phil gets stuck in the time loop. To appease them, Rubin wrote in a subplot about an ex-girlfriend of Phil's turning out to be a witch and cursing him. No one liked the idea, though, and the explanation was once again removed. 8) Monsters, Inc. As Pixar have a perceived standard of quality to maintain, their movies often undergo a rigorous development process to ensure they've got things as perfect as can be. Monsters, Inc. is a prime example of a movie that went through several different versions until the final product was formed. Here's director Pete Docter on his much more adult original idea: "My idea was that what it was about was about a 30 year old man who is like an accountant or something, he hates his job, and one day he gets a book with some drawings in it that he did when he was a kid from his mom, and he doesn't think anything of it and he puts it on the shelf and that night, monsters show up. And nobody else can see them. He thinks he's starting to go crazy, they follow him to his job, and on his dates, and all this— and it turns out these monsters are fears that he never dealt with as a kid." Another alternate version of the film would have focused on an inept monster befriending a human girl and her teaching him how to be scary. Said monster was George Sanderson, who later appeared in the final product as the furry creature who unfortunately keeps getting caught by the CDA. 7) Batman Tim Burton's gothic Batman might seem more kooky to us nowadays rather than dark, but back in 1989, it was shocking to finally have a Batman adaptation take the character seriously. The initial version of the movie, however, hadn't quite shaken off the campy excesses of the 1960s TV show to the same extent. Written in 1984 by Superman and James Bond screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz, the script wildly veers from grim to goofy and back again. While it opened with the brutal killing of Bruce Wayne's parents, it also featured Batman with sci-fi gadgets like holograms and a scene where he fought a bunch of jetpack-wearing goons. He was also depicted as being best buds with Gotham's glitterati rather than a hunted vigilante. The Joker was still the main villain, but it was stuffed full of minor antagonists e.g. the Penguin, corrupt politician Rupert Thorne and the Waynes' killer Joe Chill. To be fair to Mankiewicz, Frank Miller's Batman: Year One hadn't been written at the time so there was no blueprint for a gritty Batman origin story. Still, the hero's renaissance might never have happened if this tonally confused script got off the grounds. 6) Spider-Man You may know that Avatar director James Cameron worked on his own Spider-Man movie throughout the 90s, before it ultimately fell through and the franchise landed in the lap of Sam Raimi. What you might not know, however, is how off-the-wall insane his Spider-Man script was. First up, some context. In order to get his $3 million writer's fee, Cameron had to give the studio a screenplay budgeted at $60 million. His answer was just to take an old un-produced script (that had already been doctored by about seven writers) and polish it up. The result, as expected, was an incomprehensible mess. For one, Doctor Octopus was the main villain in this version. Except, he was inexplicably known as Professor Octopus and was also bitten by a radioactive spider - which meant he also referred to himself as Spider-Man. Oh, and his big evil scheme was basically stealing Peter's physics paper. As if that wasn't weird enough, Ock had a comic sidekick called Wiener and his robotic arms were referred to as Waldos. Funnily enough, Arnold Schwarzenegger was set to play Ock - in a supervillain role that would have been even goofier than his Mr. Freeze. 5) E.T. One of Spielberg's great achievements is family favourite E.T., which remains one of most cherished movies for anyone who grew up in the 1980s. Those kids would have felt pretty differently about the film if the director's original version had been made, though. After Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg had an idea to follow it up with a sci-fi/horror movie. The result was Night Skies, a script about a bunch of evil aliens with deadly long bony fingers who terrorize a helpless family. However, Spielberg grew to hate the idea - later commenting "I must have taken leave of my senses" - and binned the script. He did like the subplot about a friendly alien befriending a young boy, though, and fleshed that out into its own movie. Still, Spielberg clinged to the idea of a sci-fi/horror and later rewrote Night Skies as Nocturnal Fears, a shockingly scary sequel to E.T. which would have seen E.T.'s evil brethren invading Earth. Mr. Spielberg, your senses have gone again! 4) Back To The Future Back To The Future is one of the greatest feel-good family movies. Which, if you think about it, is kind of odd considering it's largely built around a mother having the hots for her son. The darker edge to the movie was much more pronounced in the early iterations of the movie, though. To the extent that Marty was a chronic depressive who tried to commit suicide. No, really. In early versions of the script, Marty entered Doc's time machine - then a converted refrigerator that ran on Coca-Cola - because he thought, for some reason, that it was some kind of suicide booth. Screenwriter Bob Gale later admitted: "We thought that was a good idea for way longer than we should have." The ending of the movie is also hugely changed. When Marty and Doc Brown - actually referred to as Professor at this point - return to the future, they find a completely different 1980s; one similar to the idyllic space-age version of the future imagined in the 1950s. The only drawback was that rock n' roll had never been invented, somehow due to Marty's performance in the past. 3) Twilight We'll have to see whether it will stand the test of time, but a few years ago you couldn't get away from the Twilight franchise. Stephanie Meyer's vampire romance novels spawned a multi-movie series that raked in the cash despite getting mauled by critics and generally anyone who wasn't a Robert Pattinson-obsessed teen. Weirdly enough, though, an early version of the first movie nearly went off in a totally different direction. Back when Paramount had the rights to the books, they wanted to turn the series into a new Underworld-type horror-action franchise. Edward and Bella would have been rebooted as a kickass vampire couple fighting against evil FBI agents who were trying to wipe out vampirekind. This would have been perhaps the only movie on this list that would have been better if it stuck to the original idea. Twihards would have been in fits, of course, but a whole new audience might have actually enjoyed the franchise. 2) Toy Story The Toy Story franchise is Pixar's jewel in the crown. The first one, in particular, launched the studio into the big leagues and convinced everyone that computer animation could tell as charming, funny and human stories as regular animation. It might not have been quite as successful, though, if the original draft had gone ahead. Far from the brave, if misguided, sheriff we know and love, the original version of Woody was a ventriloquist's dummy who ruled Andy's room like a dictator. His main victim was diminutive space doll Lunar Larry, whose upbeat personality contrasted with Woody's cynical, vindictive outlook. You know that scene in the movie where Woody accidentally knocks Buzz out the window? In the first version, Woody straight up chucks him out to his death. Thankfully, the script was heavily redrafted and redrafted until everyone was happy with it. Future Avengers director Joss Whedon worked on it towards the end of the process, including changing the Buzz character into the oblivious Space Ranger we're familiar with. 1) Star Wars Star Wars fans have often disputed George Lucas' claim that he had at least the original trilogy, and possibly the prequel movies, planned out from the beginning. The biggest piece of evidence that proves he didn't is the totally different first form of the film that would become known as Episode IV: A New Hope. Called The Star Wars (and before that The Journey of the Whills), it followed a petulant teen named Annikin Starkiller as he's trained in the ways of the Jedi by General Luke Skywalker. Han Solo and Chewbacca are still around, of course, but they were depicted as a green-skinned alien and a scary-looking ape creature, respectively. In one memorable scene, Annikin would have punched (the 14-year-old) Princess Leia in the face... which then led her to fall in love with him. Clearly, the basic shape of the saga was there but most of the elements that made Star Wars so brilliant were not yet in the right shape. We're not sure we'd be getting The Star Wars: Episode VIII at the end of the year if the original movie had been made in its early form.