10 Famous Movie Endings That Had Radical Last Minute Changes

8. 28 Days Later Could Have Been Even More Bleak

One of our favourite DVD easter eggs of all time was one of the proposed original endings to Danny Boyle's totally-not-a-zombie-movie 28 Days Later, which even billed itself as the "Radical Alternate Ending". Honestly, it's like they were gunning to get on this list the whole time. Writer Alex Garland tried a few different climaxes to the classic contemporary horror film, eventually settling on the reveal that maybe mankind are the REAL monsters as our heroes escape the rage-infected cannibal hordes only to fall prey to a bunch of insane, violent soldiers holed up in a mansion, claiming to have access to a "cure". Eventually stuff works out anyway, as the core group escape and hide in a nice cottage on the coast until some Americans in planes come find them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRzQZvCR11Y There were actually a couple of different endings shot for the film, including one which saw Cillian Murphy's Jim die on a hospital operating table, after pals Selena and Hannah fail to resuscitate him following their escape from the army nutters. Test audiences weren't big on that, nor the version that saw Jim flashing back to the car crash that put him in the coma he awoke from during the movie's iconic opening sequence. Or the one which is the same as the official ending, but saw Jim dead and only Selena and Hannah hanging out in Cornwall and waving at passing fighter jets. The change from the originally planned Radical Alternative Ending was even more extreme, however. In fact it's an entirely different third act, as the group never make it to the soldier-controlled mansion and instead come across the medical facility from the start of the flick, where a scientist has locked himself away but claims he can cure the rage virus by performing full body blood transfusions. Which was pretty silly. Maybe for the best they radically changed this.