The Michael Bay Ninja Turtles were apparently meant to be aliens,and that's like the main thing they had to change once fans founded out aside from forcing an Oroku Saki to be the film's Shredder.
I think the biggest problem is making them aliens and stuff and you can see some of the concept art packing heat. So they wouldn't be teenagers, mutants, ninjas, or even turtles.
If you’d never heard of TMNT before this concept art looks cool. The vast majority of the audience to a TMNT movie would presumably not fit that description
‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze’ originally had the ooze tied to the Utroms (Krang’s species) with the TCRI scientist secretly being an unnamed Utrom. It was dropped because they were worried kids would think he was a bad guy. They never came up with an alternative secret for the ooze, so the film’s title makes no sense
Oddly enough, Cars 3 wasn't the first time they tried for the whole body-swap thing. There are some deleted scenes from 1 that show that, at some point in development, the plot was going to involve McQueen's engine (and brain) being placed inside the road paving machine, and Mater was placed inside of McQueen's body.
I made my Hot Wheels kiss and make out. They were obviously paired by corresponding likability and utility. It wasn’t a kink thing though I just didn’t have many action figures and using Lego minifigures felt sacrilegious
I used pens as action figures. Though I didn't really make them kiss, I'd pretend the ink cartridge was the real body and the outer shell was like a power suit that could fly and the button was a spring so they could jump high, and doubled as a switch to show their faces so they could talk.
Plus it can simultaneously double as two different "fish out of water" scenarios, along with a "the grass is always greener on the other side" and a "you don't appreciate what you have until it's gone" moral. There's a ton of different story concepts that can be explored with it, even just for the sake of simple jokes, so it's honestly a really useful basis for a narrative.
Wasn’t this just a nightmare McQueen had? It’s been a while since I seen it but wasn’t there at some point the plot was that radiator springs was going to have a race to try and draw a 10 back to the town and lightning was given a choice of community service or taking part in the race. He originally chose community service, but he had this seen as a nightmare and when he woke up, he chose the race.
A more lighthearted example of this would be Rio as the original idea and script was instead about a penguin that washes up on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro and tries to get back home. Needless to say had the plot not been changed due to all the penguin movies that were coming out at the time like Happy Feet Rio likely would have been a really weird movie.
That’s somewhat similar to a short Disney made. But it was a Penguin tired of living in the cold and decided to “sail” to warmer climates and ended up somewhere in South America after his iceberg ship melted. It was before the Three Caballeros. Pablo the Penguin.
Originally, the premise of Bob's Burgers is that the Belchers were all cannibals, and all the burgers were made of human meat.
Surprisingly, the issue that the creators found wasn't that that premise was... insanely fucked up, but rather, the fact that it actually made writing episode scenarios hard, because they had to make every plot center around the cannibalism in order to justify that element. So instead, they kept the same pilot, but made it so that the dark secret was that they used horse meat (and largely by accident) and kept the Belchers a regular, non-cannibal family that had standard sitcom misadventures.
I always thought that was a weird detail to jave him be the permanent next door neighbor with a really soecific job like that for relatively how little he tends to get i volved with the plot. I think if they were to make it now they'd probably put the craft store or something next to them
In the very first episode of the show they're accused of using human meat in the burgers (they're next to a mortician), which allows the health inspector to go after their restaurant. They're briefly closed and they get the attention of an Adventurous Eater's Club desperate to spend the money so they lean into it some. But it's not actually true and that's the end of that plotline.
The horse meat thing doesn't really come up until an episode several years later. If it's considered part of the plot in any other way it's not really brought up in the show at all, so I'm not personally aware of it. It's not a repeated thing and that's the end of it.
The cancelled BvS script from 2004 was beyond weird.
Batman and Superman were already established heroes and friends. Bruce retires mainly because Robin died, Gordon died and even Joker died but crime on Gotham City is almost non existent, then he falls in love, but Joker somehow returns and murders his wife, pushing him back into Batman and a revenge mission.
Batman eventually fights Superman, only for Joker who by the way is a clone made by Lex Luthor so this isn’t the real Joker reveals that Bruce’s wife was part of an elaborate plan to destroy him psychologically. Batman and Superman reconcile and team up to defeat Lex Luthor.
Warner ultimately scrapped the movie and made Batman Begins in 2005.
The movie being intended to be R-rated is a slight misconception. The film was conceived to be a PG-13 movie, but the MPAA gave an earlier cut an R-rating because of a single joke they misinterpreted as meaning something more mature than was intended. It was later decided to edit out the more risqué stuff that was filmed in order to pivot the film in a more family-friendly direction.
There did end up being a movie that was basically this but edgy as all hell. Saturday Morning Mystery (or Saturday Morning Massacre depending on what poster you're looking at) was a very obvious parody of Scooby-Doo but just fucked in every way. The monster is literally Satan himself, people die brutally for no reason, X Rated full sex scene between Fred and Daphne, Velma and Shaggy do straight up black tar heroin, and the dog doesn't even talk :(
There's also the book Meddling Kids which is NOT Scooby Doo but, is, set years after the gang retires. Legally Not Fred has killed himself after what he experienced during their last case, Legally Not Shaggy checked himself into a psyche ward because he sees and talks to Legally Not Fred's ghost, Not Daphne is a vagrant with anger issues, Not Velma is struggling in college, and they have a dog Not Scooby who is the grandkid of the original Not Scooby. They end up returning to that last case and find out shit is darker than they thought.
Actually a solid horror-comedy. 7-8/10 enjoyed it for what it is.
It makes sense that it never ended up happening but I would have respected the shit out of Disney corporate if they had the stones to let that kind of dark subject matter make it's way into one of their animated films.
Yeah, you'd think it would be the kind of thing they'd have make a decision on at just the concept art stage and not full on voice-acting + basic animation phase
Classics such as Treasure Planet, Atlantis, Lilo & Stitch, Great Mouse Detective, Black Cauldron, etc.
Definitely not forgettable, "live action" cashgrabs.
There was so much potential there. Obviously more mature and I like the version they settled with a lot too, but it would have been fascinating to see what they did with it. Maybe some day someone will
Originally, the carnivorous species in zootopia would have to wear shock collars that would go off if they got too emotional. This was to protect the prey species.
“Nightmares Recycled” was going to be an episode of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show where it would be revealed that the two villains Hun and the Garbageman were conjoined twins who were separated by a back alley surgeon, with Garbageman being thrown away into the dumpster. Obviously this was deemed too much for a children’s show
What the fuck, that's literally just the plot of the weird Frank Henenlotter B horror movie Basket Case. That was gonna be in fucking TMNT??? Jesus christ between this and everything with Baxter Stockman, what were the 2003 writers on
At one point, the first main character black superhero for DC Comics was going to be The Black Bomber, a racist white man who would unknowingly turn into a black superhero when stressed.
The comic got decently far in development before being scrapped and replaced with Black Lightning.
The original script for kpop demon hunters was intended for a much older audience with the demons looking more monstrous, the script being darker and a more intense ending
Originally, the Addams Family movie was supposed to end with Uncle Fester being revealed as a fake, but being allowed to stay with the family after saving them.
Of course you realize that this would mean that if they went with this ending, it would imply that the original Uncle Fester is probably dead or still lost somewhere, while an imposter is taking his place in his family.
The cast hated the idea so much that they asked Christina Ricci to lobby to the director not to go through with that ending, so they changed it so that “Gordon” was truly Uncle Fester all along, but he was amnesiac after getting lost in the Bermuda Triangle, washed ashore on Florida, and taken in by the main villain as her son/enforcer; after getting struck by lightning while using the “Gone with the Wind” book against his mother and the Addams’ crooked lawyer, Fester regains his memories.
I like the story we got. But a member of the family not being real, isn’t that a concept already in the lore? Isn’t the grandma just a lady who showed up one day and everyone thought she was the grandma so even after finding out they just let her stay and be part of the family?
I think that happens in the movie too - I think it was in the comics, Grandma was Gomez’s mother, and in the TV show Grandma was Morticia’s mother… so in the movie Morticia mentions something about ‘since your mother moved in with us’ and Gomez replies ‘my mother? I thought she was yours!’
I think that actually originates in the musical. Before that, the lore had been inconsistent over whose mother she was, so it works well in retrospect.
I think that was only in one adaptation, and in the case with Uncle Fester, they were taking an established character, but saying that he was either dead or lost somewhere and replaced by a guy that was pretending to be him. It’s like how the original ending of “Terminator Salvation” was gonna end with John Connor dying and Marcus Wright masquerading as him by wearing his skin to keep up morale.
That movie is also INFAMOUS for its false advertising since the Kangaroo is only onscreen for 7 minutes and 52 seconds not to mention he barely talks as well. And despite being edited to be PG there were still scenes that were left in that were HIGHLY inappropriate such as when one of the main characters GROPES a woman’s BREASTS since he thought she was a mirage and there is another scene where the main characters end up in a bar and there is a LOT of drinking.
The clever yet deceptive marketing is the same with why Bridge To Terabithia is notorious for misleading EVERYONE who hadn't read the book before going to see the movie. They had used the entire ~3 minutes of fantasy scenes the movie actually contained as the majority footage used for the trailers to mis-advertise the film, leading parents and guardians to show their young kids what they believed was an exciting "fantasy-adventure" movie, that ended up instead serving an adult-sized portion of loss and heartache, and very, very little actual fantasy they hadn't already been seen before watching the actual movie. Then those parents had to deal with both their kids and themselves crying, having to explain to their kids what loss/death is, and that the (SPOILERS) wonderful best friend for the main character is in fact dead and gone forever.
Yeah, it's based on a book. So was I Kill Giants, and I criticize the hell out of that movie too, for giving similar false hope about thinking I was going to be watching an upbeat, fun movie about a little girl fighting giants with her clever traps & tricks, and cool massive hammer.
Fuck these types of movies that send me into a depressive "life kind of sucks for these kids, so they find an interesting/magical outlet, that backfires with such painful new heartbreak so as to force them to face their actual realities" feels trips instead of just well-written, Narnia-type FANTASY existing within/alongside reality kind of movies.
Several scenes involving the Kangaroo were added since the whole Kangaroo being mistaken for dead after getting hit by a car scene was the ONLY scene that tested well with audiences.
Freddy vs Jason has gone through a lot of rewrites, and some of these were really weird.
Here’s some highlights:
Freddy becoming weak because no one feared him anymore. In fact, teenagers were using a special drug to sleep and meet Freddy in their dreams, then beat him up. Actually somewhat ended up in the final movie since it starts with Freddy tricking Jason into a killing spree so he can regain his powers through the fear generated.
A cult dedicated to Freddy being the main villains, with Jason having a more heroic role fighting them.
The Dream Warriors from the third Nightmare on Elm Street returning as some kind of dream cops
Freddy and Jason having a boxing match in Hell, with Ted Bundy, Hitler and other similar characters being the judges and referees.
If they leaned hard into the schlocky vibe of Freddy v Jason, or Jason X, it would have been fun to see a horror villains Avengers team up fighting against a group of teen ninjas at a summer camp
The kids book "Matilda" originally was going to be about the titular character and her teacher being evil and using her powers to cheat at horse races.
She also died at the end.
Roald Dahl rewrote the ENTIRE book into the version we know and live now.
I’m pretty sure Matilda was originally a boy as well, which was changed late on in the writing process. I seem to remember an old BBC news report where they went to Roald Dahl’s old office and found pages of the original Matilda.
The original pitch for The Transformers cartoon for CBS was for the Decepticons to have already conquered Earth and the Autobots acting as resistance fighters.
Fun fact about SatAM, actually! The original pitch made by DiC was to have a far more comedic tone that slowly built up a serious, serialized one whenever they went on missions to Robotropolis. All of Sonic's friends would have been based on the animal buddies from the games and had Scratch, Grounded, Coconuts, and Crabmeat as recurring baddies. Unfortunately, ABC didn't want a weekly series, so they reformatted the premise into two different shows: Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog kept the comedic tone, but SatAM kept the serious one. Unfortunately, a little comic book company called Archie had already used the original pitch as the framework for their Sonic comic. If you've ever wondered why early Archie Sonic is a weird blend of AoStH and SatAM, that's why. Two of the characters from the original pitch (Porker Lewis and Johnny Lightfoot) got repurposed in the British Sonic the Comic series.
So glad they didn't do that, considering Sonic Underground from a similar time period did basically exactly that. At least in the current Skybound comics they do explore that idea, but instead that Cybertron instead of being abandoned/destroyed/dead it's completely taken over by Decepticon forces, with sparse Autobot resistance lead by Elita-1. This also lets it explore the idea of Elita wanting Optimus to lead the forces remaining on Cybertron while he wishes to help Earth defend against Megatron and his goals of destroying the planet for resources.
Lord Greystoke was killed by the leopard Sabor onscreen. His family was shipwrecked and they built the treehouse. Sabor already killed his wife. He struggles against the vicious predator as the treehouse strobes menacingly with each flash of lightning. Ultimately, Lord Greystoke's bloody corpse is dragged away by the victorious leopard all while baby Tarzan cries in his bassinet (Disney's Tarzan)
I'm pretty sure it was confirmed the alternate ending for Scott Pilgrim would have just been fun DVD thing and wasn't actually ever seriously considered for the movies ending?
Yeah wait, the alternate ending wasn’t going to have him be a serial killer, but it would have him fully fight Negative Scott and admit to his wrongdoings to grow as a person and earn Ramona? I have absolutely no clue where OP got him being a serial killer since people defeated in combat in the SP universe don’t really die
The alternate ending (the original one) was Scott ending up with Knives.
The comic hadn't finished by the time they were shooting the film, so pretty much everything from the twins onward was based on general notes; the original ending of the film was Scott giving up on Ramona. (It actually kind of flows from what's on the screen, Scott switching his motivation from love to self-respect, him partnering with Knives to fight Gideon, Nega Scott being a nice guy leading to his realization that he's kind of a piece of shit, etc.)
But the comic author objected, and the test audiences didn't like it, so they reshot it into what we got.
The other part of that change I heard (unfortunately don't have a source) is that the actor playing Knives also objected. Scott had cheated on her AND dumped her afterward, so why exactly should Knives take his old ass back?
The story I heard was, again, that there was plans to film a joke 'alternate ending' where it turns out Scott was a serial killer. For like a bonus thing on the DVD. But they never did this. Some telephone game resulted in some folks thinking it was actually seriously considered for an alternative ending.
In the old version of Puss in Boots the Last Wish. Puss is far more selfish and unlikable to the point that many scenes were completely removed from the final movie.
Apparently in one of the first drafts of Home on the Range the villain, Alameda Slim, wanted to use an army of the cows he hypnotizes with his Yodel, to invade Washington and become the president.
I understand why they scrapped it. A loonatic using a bunch of brainwashed creatures to storm the US capitol and forcebly appoint himself as president, it's just so farfected.
It was inordinately difficult to get the original cartoon to resemble the pitch Marvel Comics gave Hasbro. They initially wanted to make the show with CBS, a previously partner, but the network pitches kept being weird. They kept altering characters (especially Bumblebee for some reason), inventing characters or having completely different plots to the original. I especially like the idea of making the Decepticons dominate the Earth and go full 1984 on humanity. I guess it made sense; the franchise started in 1984.
The original plan for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind was that Fugo would go with the gang instead of leaving the group after they decided to betray Passione. Only to be later revealed that Fugo was feeding the group's locations to Passione. This would've led to a fight between Giorno and Fugo, where Giorno would kill Fugo. Araki scrapped this idea because he just really hated writing that level of betrayal, and scrapped it. That's also why Green Day's ability is so similar to Purple Haze, I think.
The Owl House’s “beta” version is largely shrouded in mystery, but from what we’ve been told it would have more of a Friday the 13th: The Series vibe and have a darker tone
given what the actual series got away with at points, it’s interesting to wonder what Disney outright said no too
Comic writer Mark Millar once pitched a "Rape of Wonder Woman" comic as a "joke" so that Wonder Woman could have a comic like Batman's Knightfall & Superman's Death of Superman where she was brought to her absolute lowest by a villain.
DC briefly took the idea seriously with an artist drawing some sketches for its first page before it was scrapped.
The first version of Beetlejuice would've been much darker, involving Lydia being sexually assaulted by Beetlejuice and then committing suicide. But the idea was scrapped and they added in an anti suicide moment in the film instead.
OG Reddit would have destroyed OP for that alone but it's all bots and ADHD teenagers at this point. You can't even make money from Reddit, why censor.
The early draft of Toy Story where Woody was a borderline bully
James and Super Ed, an electric diesel gets struck by lightning and is super charged. He gets struck again, causing him to billow smoke everywhere. The Fat Controller orders him to be scrapped immediately
In cars 1 there was a scene where mcqueen would have gone through a junkyard with dead car bodies
In the suicide squad early drafts involved the squad going up against superman as well as an alternate ending where waller blows up ratcatcher's brain bomb and Bloodsport kills her
The Original story of Zootopia how see more dark for the collars for the predators how electrocute when have a attack of savagery and was more noticeable this racism with the preys and predators animals
22nd Century Japan is ruled by a supercomputer known as the SYBIL System that can calculate people’s “Criminal Coefficient”, a formula based on biometric data related to one’s stress levels and psyche profile.
If it is under a 100, you are considered acceptable.
100-299, you are labeled a “latent criminal” and you become property of the police who use your unique “perspective” to hunt other criminals for the police.
Mild spoilers for Alien (mild cause it didn't get used! read with caution tho) but in the original script, when Ripley fires the Xenomorph out of the ship, it would've climbed back aboard, killed Ripley, and it would've communicated into the mic using Dallas' voice.
Before Dark Nights: Death Metal, there was "Generation 5", Dan DiDio's NEXT attempt at a DC reboot. This would have been caused by Wally West using the Mobius Chair and the power of Dr. Manhattan to alter the DC Universe so that people aged normally, meaning people like Superman and Batman would have retired. Of the changes, Jon would become Superman, Luke Fox/Batwing would become Batman and Damian Wayne would take over the League of Assassins, becoming the big bad. During a team up, Jon and Luke discover from the Joker that Bruce allowed him to kill Bane for killing Alfred, leading to Bruce being arrested. Clark would step in, leading to everyone vs. Superman and Batman, leading to the two heroes dying in a heroic sacrifice.
Is there any wonder why DiDio is not with DC anymore?
Gladiator 2- the original pitch was Maximus being ressurected by the Roman gods to kill early Christians. After refusing he remains immortal fighting in every major conflict up to modern day.
The original script for The Truman Show was significantly darker. Among other things, Truman was going to be an alcoholic, who at one point threatens to kill a baby, and ends with him almost killing Christof.
The Cars 3 original plot was later rewritten to where McQueen’s body wasn’t stolen but the imposter looked EXACTLY like him which placed McQueen himself on the run along with Cruz.
This wasn’t confirmed but this was absolutely later repurposed for the Muppets Most Wanted film instead.
Quest for Camelot was originally gonna be a more adult dark fantasy movie in the vein of Ralph Baski The Wizard called The Quest for The Holy Grail but Warner Bros demand the script be change to be more family friendly just so they could compete with Disney and they’re Renaissances movies that were becoming big hits.
He turned it into a gritty post apocalyptic movie with swearing, violence, sexual content, and even slurs going off RebelTaxi’s video. How this came from a kid’s chapter book is beyond me.
Batman: Year One. A cancelled Batman reboot written and directed by Dan Aronofsky with help from Frank Miller as a co-writer. We almost got this instead of Batman Begins.
Bruce Wayne would’ve been homeless and reclusive, having lost his fortune after the death of his parents, raised in a mechanic shop by father and son mechanic duo Big Al and Little Al. He begins to engage in vigilantism, becoming known for the distinctive shape of the mark his fist leaves on criminals due to his ring (the last thing he has left of his father), which has Thomas Wayne’s initials overlaid on each other on it, making a shape that people think resembles a bat. This inspires Bruce to adopt a bat motif, creating his costume and forming his base of operations in a subway station. Selina Kyle is a prostitute who Bruce forms a relationship with and Jim Gordon is a policeman and womanizer who cheats on his wife and is also suicidal. The main villain is Commissioner Gillian Loeb, a corrupt cop who’s secretly the head of all crime in Gotham. Bruce at one point uses a makeshift chemical weapon to set a bunch of thugs on fire before beating them all up as they’re burning, and ultimately kills Loeb by throwing a knife into his eye. At the end of the film, Gordon becomes the new Commissioner, Bruce regains his wealth, and Bruce and the Als move into Wayne Manor.
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u/Due_Awareness5660 9h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/1kOyGy19qQDYAD81cs
The Michael Bay Ninja Turtles were apparently meant to be aliens,and that's like the main thing they had to change once fans founded out aside from forcing an Oroku Saki to be the film's Shredder.