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Between the first word put on the page of a script and the completed theatrical release, a film goes through countless changes, shifts, rewrites, and sometimes complete reshoots. Even after a film is released—such as in the case of a movie like Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner"—the director can continue working on additional alterations to be released in future home media releases, or even as entirely separate films from the theatrical cut. Director Jordan Peele publicly said it took a whopping 200 drafts of his widely acclaimed and award-winning film "Get Out" before he had a version that was ready for production. And even then, the original ending had to be reshot once it got in front of test audiences. Movies are a collaborative process. When all the moving pieces are combined, and cast and crew assembled, different perspectives and inputs can drastically alter a film's original course. This is in addition to the eventual input acquired from test screenings, which can further complicate a film's road to completion.
So, sometimes alternate endings come about because test audiences don't agree with the director's vision, and consumption has to be taken into account over artistic intent. Sometimes, a studio gets its hands over the production first, foreseeing potential problems with test audiences before they even happen. And sometimes, it's simply that there was too much additional footage shot that couldn't make the final cut of the film, or the director changed his mind one way or the other. But whatever the case may be, a revised ending can drastically reshape a movie from start to finish—oftentimes for the better, but equally as often for the worse. However, most of the time, these alternate endings become eventually accessible to the public, either released with home media or even leaked online, allowing people to see the movies that could've been.
Thus, after scouring the internet and acquiring information from various sources, Stacker compiled its own list of movies with alternate endings, ranging widely in genre, medium, and reason for changed ending. Starting with the year 1939, all the way up until 2018, here are 50 movies with alternate endings.
