9 Movies That Completely Changed With Reshoots

Unless you've been on the Moon this past month, you'll probably already know all about what's happening with Gareth Edwards' Rogue One. But in case you have been living on an outer world colony in recent weeks, here's the skinny: Disney's next Star Wars movie, though thought to be completed last year, is now undergoing reshoots. Depending on who you believe, these could be rather minor or very significant indeed. There are many conflicting reports out there. Star Mads Mikkelsen has said "it's the same film, it's just adding little bits here and there to do the final polishing." Others, however, suggest Rogue One is about to see some major changes (due to it being "too dark"). One widely-circulated rumor even goes so far as to suggest that a whopping 40% of the film is being reshot. If it's the case that Rogue One is about to completely change, Edwards might take comfort in the fact that his film's not alone. Reshoots on major movies are becoming more common, but throughout Hollywood history many films have been altered almost beyond recognition by new material filmed after the initial shoot, and here are nine examples. 9) Fantastic Four This one's a good recent example of why reshoots aren't always necessarily a good idea. Both Fantastic Four director Josh Trank and the film's star Toby Kebbell have insisted that Trank's original version of the film was, respectively, "fantastic" and "great," albeit "much darker." Still, regardless of how good Trank's original version was, 20th Century Fox wanted reshoots. The result of the mish-mash, of Trank's vision and the new scenes, was not good. You can see just which is Trank's more mature comic book movie and which are the slapdash studio-mandated reshoots: Add to the nonsensical storyline the cast reading their (woeful) lines as if they have guns at their backs, some unfinished third-act effects and - worst of all - Kate Mara's horrendous wig (required after Mara had cut her hair following the initial shoot) - and you have what ultimately ended up being a pretty horrible film. 8) September No movie on this list went through changes quite like Woody Allen's "filmed play" September. After the shoot was over, the whole film was redone from top to bottom, "rethought and rewritten," with Allen making a whole new second version from extensive reshoots. The most notable difference was the cast, as Allen replaced many of the original actors with a set of new ones. Originally, the film starred Sam Shepard, Maureen O'Sullivan and Charles Durning. After Allen saw the original version he'd originally shot, he went at it again with a new script, replacing Shepard with Sam Waterston, O'Sullivan with Elaine Stritch and Durning with Denholm Elliott. Even after the second version of September was released, Allen was still keen to revamp it a third time. 7) World War Z Unnecessary reshoots can damage perfectly good movies, but sometimes films in crisis can also be saved by entirely re-thinking the project after it's already been shot. So it went for World War Z, Marc Forster's zombie epic, which at first ended with a buzz-killing final third set in Russia rather than the small-scale, Wales-set climax of the theatrical cut. Originally, World War Z's last act found Brad Pitt's Gerry as one of a squad of slave soldiers fighting off the zombie horde in wintry Moscow, one-armed Israeli combatant Segen taken as a prostitute for the Russian elite, and Gerry's wife held captive by Matthew Fox's Pararescueman. Somewhat predictably, Pitt and Forster found this section of the film too heavy for a 12A blockbuster, opting to scrap it and replace it with the sequence set at the WHO facility. 6) Exorcist: The Beginning Like Woody Allen's September, reshoots on the Exorcist prequel didn't just retool an existing film, they created two entirely separate, complete movies. The difference with the Exorcist project was that the reshoots were entirely out of the hands of the original director, Paul Schrader, and instead given over to a different filmmaker, Renny Harlin. Another difference: unlike September, you can watch both versions of the twice-shot Exorcist prequel. Harlin's Exorcist: The Beginning stars Stellan Skarsgard, Izabella Scorupco and James D'Arcy and is a straightforward (some would say generic) horror, while Schrader's Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist stars Skarsgard, Gabriel Mann and Clara Bellar and is a quieter meditation on the nature of evil. Unfortunately, neither were particularly well-received. 5) Superman II Like the Exorcist project, both versions of the shot then reshot Superman II are readily available. There's the version by Richard Donner, which was shot simultaneously along with his 1978 Superman movie, and which was released on home video in 2006. According to Donner, he shot 75% of movie, and the remainder we see is made up of newly-created visual effects shots and reshoots done by Donner's replacement, Richard Lester. It's Lester whose name is on the theatrical cut of Superman II; he was drafted in to replace Donner after the latter clashed with producers. Lester had to reshoot at least 51% of the movie in order to receive a director's credit, and with the release of 'The Richard Donner Cut', we see what exactly Lester altered: the prologue, the opening sequence and the ending, with whole Donner scenes - including one in which Lois tricks Clark into revealing his alter-ego - excised . 4) Back To The Future Back to the Future almost wasn't the classic we know today. It took an extra $3 million and an additional five weeks of shooting to undo what writer-director Robert Zemeckis came to see was a movie-sinking mistake: casting Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly. More than a month into the shoot, Zemeckis sent Stoltz on his way, replaced him with Michael J. Fox in the lead, and started from scratch. It wasn't just Back to the Future's lead actor that changed with reshoots, either. In fact, Michael J. Fox changed the entire tone of the film. Whereas Stoltz played Marty McFly "terrifically dramatic" (Zemeckis' words), Fox brought a completely different energy. Basically, he turned the movie into a comedy, rather than the bittersweet drama Stoltz was making. 3) The Invasion There have, over the years, been several great adaptations of Jack Finney's sci-fi novel The Body Snatchers; 2007's The Invasion isn't one of them. By most critics' reckoning, the movie's all over the place, and undoubtedly the main reason it's so muddled is that the film - originally directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel - was worked over by four directors in total. Hirschbiegel was going for an ideas-driven sci-fi high in tension, which used minimal effects and zero greenscreen work. This did nothing for studio Warner Bros, however, who hired the Wachowskis and James McTeigue to action up the film, re-write a portion of it and - perhaps most significantly - add a new twist ending. And voila: the final movie, low on plot and high on explosive action, reportedly looks nothing like Hirschbiegel's vision. 2) Payback There was a time, back before 2006, when the actor started going off the rails and ranting about how the Jews of the world had ruined his life, that Mel Gibson being seen as too unsympathetic was considered a real issue by studios. It was such an issue that Brian Helgeland's noir-ish, 1999 crime thriller Payback, starring Gibson as a callous thief named Porter, was taken out of the director's hands and severely softened for audiences. Reshoots (courtesy of the film's production designer) and a voiceover were added to make Porter "more accessible." A less ambiguous new ending was shot, Kris Kristofferson came on board as a villain entirely absent from Helgeland's cut, and less grisly scenes replaced those in which Porter beats his wife and pokes the eyeballs from a goon's head. Overall, a third of the movie was re-worked. 1) The Simpsons Movie OK, so technically they didn't "reshoot" anything here, but nonetheless major alterations were made to The Simpsons Movie just prior to its release. Director David Silverman and his writing team kept whittling away at the film with just two months to go, eventually cutting hours of completed material (including cameos by stars such as Kelsey Grammer and Edward Norton). "Reshoots" also saw whole new characters - like bad guy Russ Cargill and Lisa's love interest Colin - completely overhauled, while Homer was made to appear much more sympathetic after some bad previews, and the film effectively changed from a musical to a straight feature-length episode, with numerous musical sequences swapped out. Its lasting gag, the Spider-Pig scene, was also added in at the last minute.