# Movies where significant scenes or entire plots had to be deleted and reshot due to offscreen events **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 17, 2018, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814 "2018-01-17T09:53:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/1 "2018-01-17T09:53:36Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/2 "2018-01-17T10:34:04Z")
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 > [@](#): > > “Survival kit contents check. In them you’ll find: > – One forty-five caliber automatic > – Two boxes of ammunition > – [six other items] > – One issue of prophylactics > – Three lipsticks > – Three pair of nylon stockings. > > Shoot, a fella’ could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff.” Between filming and release, John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas. Pickens was called back to the studio to change ‘Dallas’ to ‘Vegas.’ ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/3 "2018-01-17T12:02:35Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/4 "2018-01-17T13:09:22Z")
_Plan 9 from Outer Space_ had to make adjustments after its star died. More seriously, _The Crow_ had to make adjustments after the death of Brandon Lee. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/5 "2018-01-17T13:13:52Z")
Jean Harlow died while filming _Saratoga_. The had to complete it using stand-ins. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/6 "2018-01-17T13:41:42Z")
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: > [@](#): > > Original ending[edit] > > The cream pie fight was removed from the final cut. > It was originally planned for the film to end with a scene that depicted everyone in the war room involved in a pie fight. > > Accounts vary as to why the pie fight was cut. In a 1969 interview, Kubrick said, “I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film.”[36] Critic Alexander Walker observed that “the cream pies were flying around so thickly that people lost definition, and you couldn’t really say whom you were looking at.”[12] Nile Southern, son of screenwriter Terry Southern, suggested the fight was intended to be less jovial: “Since they were laughing, it was unusable, because instead of having that totally black, which would have been amazing, like, this blizzard, which in a sense is metaphorical for all of the missiles that are coming, as well, you just have these guys having a good old time. So, as Kubrick later said, ‘it was a disaster of Homeric proportions.’”[12] > > Effects of the Kennedy assassination on the film[edit] > > A first test screening of the film was scheduled for November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The film was just weeks from its scheduled premiere, but because of the assassination, the release was delayed until late January 1964, as it was felt that the public was in no mood for such a film any sooner.[45] > > One line by Slim Pickens, “a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff”, was dubbed to change “Dallas” to “Vegas” since Dallas was where Kennedy was killed.[46] The original reference to Dallas survives in the English audio of the French-subtitled version of the film. > > The assassination also serves as another possible reason that the pie-fight scene was cut. In the scene, after Muffley takes a pie in the face, General Turgidson exclaims: “Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime!” Editor Anthony Harvey stated that the scene “would have stayed, except that Columbia Pictures were horrified, and thought it would offend the president’s family.”[47] Kubrick and others have said that the scene had already been cut before preview night because it was inconsistent with the rest of the film.[46] > **[Dr. Strangelove](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove)** > > Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (known simply and more commonly as Dr. Strangelove) is a 1964 political satire black comedy film cowritten, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers in three roles, including the title character. The film, financed and released by Columbia Pictures, was a co-production between the United States and the United Kingdom. > The film, which satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the S... ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/7 "2018-01-17T14:16:30Z")
The 2002 Spiderman movie, shot in 2001, had Spiderman swing on the World Trade Towers. The scene was cut for obvious reasons. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/8 "2018-01-17T14:33:01Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/9 "2018-01-17T14:48:09Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > 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. 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. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/10 "2018-01-17T15:00:59Z")
John Landis’ segment of the “Twilight Zone” movie had to be rearranged a bit, due to the death of Vic Morrow. ---
**Author:** ![Arizona\_Mike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7cd45c/32.png) [@Arizona\_Mike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arizona_Mike)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/11 "2018-01-17T15:08:54Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/12 "2018-01-17T15:14:13Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/13 "2018-01-17T15:14:37Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/14 "2018-01-17T15:34:36Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/15 "2018-01-17T16:00:49Z")
The ending of [Fever Pitch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fever_Pitch_(2005_film)), with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore as baseball fans, had to be rewritten to incorporate the Boston Red Sox’ unexpected 2004 world championship. ---
**Author:** ![Randolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Randolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randolph)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/16 "2018-01-17T16:08:55Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > John Landis’ segment of the “Twilight Zone” movie had to be rearranged a bit, due to the death of Vic Morrow. Vic Morrow was rearranged a bit, too. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/17 "2018-01-17T16:29:12Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/18 "2018-01-17T16:45:12Z")
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected_by_the_September_11_attacks) with more 9/11 changes to movies and TV. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/19 "2018-01-17T16:50:38Z")
[“The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_New_York_vs._Homer_Simpson) > [@](#): > > Due to the prominence of the World Trade Center in the plot, the episode was removed from syndication after the September 11 attacks.[6][22] By 2006, the episode had come back into syndication in some areas; however, parts of the episode were often edited out.[7] One previously such edited item is a scene of two men arguing across Tower 1 and Tower 2, where a man from Tower 2 claims, “They stick all the jerks in Tower One”. Co-executive producer Bill Oakley commented in retrospect that the line was “regrettable”. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Krupe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ebca7d/32.png) [@Leo\_Krupe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Krupe)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814/20 "2018-01-17T16:59:32Z")
[Exorcist: The Beginning](http://exorcist.wikia.com/wiki/Exorcist:_The_Beginning) counts, I would think. > [@](#): > > Exorcist: The Beginning is a 2004 prequel to The Exorcist. Directed by Renny Harlin. The movie was retooled from Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist for fears that Dominion would not be as successful and the studio wanted a more classic horror movie. Both movies use the same sets and locations, and have basically the same plot. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-where-significant-scenes-or-entire-plots-had-to-be-deleted-and-reshot-due-to-offscreen-events/806814.md?page=2)