With All the Money in the World having to extensively reshoot scenes to replace Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer due to the former’s sexual assault allegations all within a month of release, I was wondering what other films had to basically scrap entire characters, scenes or even plots due to something happening off-screen at the last minute.
Note, this doesn’t include shelved films due to lack of studio interest (The Red Dawn remake wound up being shelved for a year due to MGM’s dire financial situation and during this was decided to replace the Chinese soldiers with North Korean ones but the initial shelving had nothing to do with that) or films delayed for other reasons like weather or cast sickness, it has to involve an actual controversy. Also depending on the scenario movies where an actor dies and they just shoot around them only count if they completely cut them out of the film or significantly reduce their role, as opposed to creatively shooting around them like in The Crow" and Furious 7.
Another movie I remember that wound up having to be extensively re-shot because of a real-life controversy was Gangster Squad, apparently the original ending sequence involved a shoot-out at a crowded movie theater. However the movie was suppose to come out a few months after the 2012 Aurora movie theater shooting and the studio felt it was in very bad taste to leave the sequence in so they wound up delaying the film several months and having to reshoot the entire ending sequence as well as scenes that built-up to it. As a result in the finished film the ending feels very rough and placeholder-y for obvious reason.
I’ll sneak in to mention one of the most famous examples, though it was just a tiny bit of audio that had to be changed. In Dr. Strangelove the Slim Pickens character said
Between filming and release, John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas. Pickens was called back to the studio to change ‘Dallas’ to ‘Vegas.’
If I remember correctly, near the end of shooting of Troy, a storm wiped out the section of enormous Trojan wall they’d built. So they had to rebuild this huge structure for just a few crucial shots in the final cut. Added a ton to the budget.
Pretty famously Doctor Strangelove had to shelve an entire sequence at the end that involved – no kidding - a pie fight in the War Room, at the end of which it is announced that “The President is Dead”. Kennedy’s assassination did that in. It also resulted in Slim Pickens’ line “Shoot, a fella could have a real weekend in Dallas with that stuff” to “…a weekend in Vegas…”
The Dave Barry movie Big Trouble, which involved terrorists putting a bomb aboard an airplane in Miami, was delayed for a year after the events of 9/11.
One sequence in the first Spider Man movie involved him spinning a web between the two towers of the World Trade Center to trap a helicopter. That apparently was supposed to appear in trailers. It got axed after 9/11, too.
The ending of Men in lack II was supposed to take place at the World trade Center, but that had to be changed after 9/11 as well.
On Dr. Stranfelove:
The original script for the film Across the Pacific featured Humphrey Bogart as a secret agent thwarting a Japanese plan to bomb Pearl Harbor. The actual Pearl Harbor attack occurred during filming, and the script was rewritten so that Bogart’s character instead averted an attack on the Panama Canal.
John Huston, the director, was called up for military service before filming ended, and was replaced by Vincent Sherman, who directed the final few scenes.
I actually saw a trailer with that scene (and mine was not the only derisive laugh in the theater). If I remember right, that was a year or more before the movie came out.
The original Red Dawn had to cut a scene where the Russians shoot up a McDonald’s, due to a mass shooting at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro just before release. You can still see a photo of the Soviet soldiers standing outside a McDonald’s in the promo photos.
The next episode of Top Chef is going to be interesting. The guest judge is John Besh who was accused by multiple women of sexual assault between the taping and airing of the episode. Apparently, the episode features some pretty heavy cutting to completely excise his role from broadcast.
First one that comes to mind is Back to the Future, which shot for several weeks with Eric Stoltz in the Marty McFly role before he was replaced by Michael J. Fox, who apparently had been the preferred choice all along. I believe the official story was that Fox was granted a release from his TV contract at the last minute, enabling his casting, but from what I’ve read “creative differences” on Stoltz’ part were significant factors as well. Not sure this fits the “offscreen events” criteria, but thought I’d throw it out there.
a very quick shot of the first World Trade center was in the opening of the sopranos. It was actually shown in the mirror of a car .
There was also going to be a big plot where Tony’s mother was to testify against him in court but that was cut due to the death of Nancy Marchand who played his mother.
The ending of Fever Pitch, with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore as baseball fans, had to be rewritten to incorporate the Boston Red Sox’ unexpected 2004 world championship.
the original manchurian candidate movie was not shown for a long time and the story was that it was removed due to the JFK killing. Other people though said that was not the reason.
The first episode of the TV show 24 opened with a plane bombing. It was supposed to premier on October 30, 2001 but was delayed a week because of the 9/11 attack, and the opening scene was altered to remove some of the scenes of the plane exploding.
The Bourne Identity was changed significantly to portray the CIA as less of a bad guy after 9/11. There’s a Wiki with more 9/11 changes to movies and TV.