Five insanely expensive scenes left on the cutting room floor
Deleted scenes are as much a part of filmmaking as stroppy actors and dodgy catering. Not everything that gets filmed can make it into the final cut; otherwise, every movie would be nine hours long, and nobody would ever go to the cinema.
It still costs money to film these scenes, a fact these directors know all too well. Each sequence on this list costs hundreds of thousands (in some cases millions) of dollars to produce, only to be chucked in the bin. Some of them did eventually see the light of day, while others remain a total mystery.
It should be noted that we have no idea of accurately measuring how much these scenes cost, so the figures in this list are all educated guesses. Still, based on how elaborate and long some of them are, it’s safe to assume they weren’t made on the cheap.
Prepare for your eyes to water and your wallets to feel very heavy as you dive into some of the details behind these wasted pieces of footage, driving the point home that big-budget studio projects need to learn more from indie projects.
Five expensive scenes that were left out:
‘The Pie Fight’ – Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
When you let Stanley Kubrick make a movie about Cold War tensions, you know things are going to get wacky. The madcap filmmaker unleashed his sick sense of humour while making Dr Strangelove. His take on the futility of global politics, the film sees the world’s politicians and military leaders acting like petulant children in the face of nuclear disaster. If you thought Ripper fretting over fluoride or the president of the United States trying to get his rocks off in an underground mine was ridiculous, then you should have seen how it was originally going to end.
Kubrick’s initial plan for the movie’s climax was to have a massive cream pie fight break out in the War Room. The 11-minute scene was filmed, but for a number of reasons, it was cut from the final product. Reports on why it was scrapped range from the actors laughing too much to Kubrick being unhappy with how the cream looked to the assassination of JFK. Whatever the reason, it remains lost to time. What was also lost was the estimated $2million (in today’s money) it cost to make. A heavy price for a silly scene.
‘The Octopus’ – The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985)
Directed by Richard Donner, written by Chris Columbus, and overseen by Steven Spielberg, The Goonies had all the ingredients necessary to be a major success…and it was. This cherished 1980s classic gave the world the ‘truffle shuffle’, the loveable Sloth, and future Academy Award winner Ke Huy Quan and his ‘pincers of power’. There are many great scenes in this film, but this one would have been a nightmare for those suffering from chapodiphobia. That’s a fear of octopi, by the way.
A scene featuring the gang being attacked by a giant octopus was cut from the home video release of the film. It is still mentioned by Data in one of the final scenes and even made it into the film’s tie-in video game, which must have confused people no end. Massive cephalopods don’t come cheap. It’s estimated that this scene cost over $500,000 when adjusted for inflation, which might not seem like much in the grand scheme of things but would have come as a serious blow to the crew in the 1980s. It has been restored in certain versions of the movie, but for the longest time, it was part of cinema folklore.
‘Rogue’ – X-Men: Days of Future Past (Bryan Singer, 2014)
Years before the MCU brought together its mightiest heroes in Avengers: Endgame, their mutant cousins did exactly the same thing. X-Men: Days of Future Past combined the worlds of the original three films with the more recent prequels. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender’s versions of Professor X and Magneto were right there alongside Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, while Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine spanned both timelines. Storm (Halle Berry), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), and Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page) all make their returns to the franchise, but one major component of the series was left on the cutting room floor.
Anna Paquin, whose character Rogue is the emotional core of the first X-Men film, was supposed to play a much bigger part in Days of Future Past. Unfortunately, the scenes that Paquin spent five days shooting were left out of the theatrical release. They were later included in the so-called ‘Rogue cut’ of the film, revealing an entire 17 minutes’ worth of material. These scenes could have cost anywhere in the region of $5m, but perhaps more importantly, they showed a complete disregard for a character that had played such a pivotal role in getting this franchise off the ground.
The Jitterbug Dance – The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939)
You could write a book about all the stuff that went on behind the scenes on The Wizard of Oz. In fact, several people have. This whimsical journey through L Frank Baum’s world of munchkins and golden roads was fraught with issues. From on-set bullying to toxic makeup to that background shot, working on the picture sounded anything but wonderful. It didn’t help that it cycled through a bunch of different directors, which resulted in mixed messages when it came to the finished product.
In order to attract a younger audience, a song called ‘The Jitterbug’ was written for the movie. However, when it hit cinemas in 1939, this delightful tune was nowhere to be found. The scene featuring the swing-style song, which would have seen Dorothy and the others dancing their way to the Witch’s lair, was canned due to time constraints. Only silent footage of the cast rehearsing the scene remains. It has been calculated that this attempt to be ‘down with the kids’ cost the movie $80,000. That’s $1.7m in today’s money and over a quarter of the film’s contemporary budget of $2.8m.
‘The entire original ending’ – World War Z (Marc Foster, 2013)
Based on the novel by Max Brooks – son of Hollywood legend Mel Brooks – 2013’s World War Z promised to be the most epic zombie movie ever made. Was it? Well… not really. The film is completely fine. Brad Pitt does a decent job traversing the globe looking for a cure to the mounting outbreak of ‘run-fast-and-kill-people-itis’ sweeping the globe. Some of the visuals are nice, but there’s nothing overly special about it. It didn’t help that the production was troubled beyond belief, which is where this horrifying statistic comes from.
The original script was closely modelled on the novel, which is a deeply socio-political commentary with a dark finale. Unfortunately, this didn’t fly with Paramount. They ordered that the entire ending of the movie be changed to make it happier. Unfortunately, director Marc Foster had already filmed the initial final scenes. These deleted scenes, including a huge battle with the zombies in Moscow’s Red Square, are estimated to have cost an eye-watering $25m. This, combined with the myriad other issues faced, resulted in a movie that cost anywhere between $190m and $249m. Was it worth it? Not at all
