Producers and the heads of movie studios love to think that they know better than everyone else, and while their shady interference tactics frequently do result in ridiculous profits, this is often at the creative expense of the end product. Moreover, it's a short-sighted way of conducting business, because if you screw us over once, you're not going to get our repeat business for the sequels. Nevertheless, studios are all about the bottom line, and to an extent, given that they're a business, this is fairly understandable. It's just that so often they don't seem to have art in mind
at all, and as a result, these 10 promising movies were dragged through the mud, ripped to pieces and then put back together, the end result being widely derided by audiences and critics. Thankfully in a few instances, the directors were able to regain their agency and release a subsequent director's cut which remedied the problems, but that does little to salve the minds of those millions whose opinion of the film is already forever tainted. Here are 10 movies ruined by studio interference...
10. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a highly-anticipated spin-off of the X-Men franchise, one which became a critical punching bag and endured an underwhelming box office performance, in part because someone leaked a workprint of the film online weeks before release, cluing millions into its badness ahead of spending their hard-earned money on it. Nevertheless, it should not have been hard to make a good film out of this material, given the in-built demand for it and the fact that Hugh Jackman is simply superb as Wolverine. But 20th Century Fox - who will be appearing on this list many times - managed it anyway. Deadpool, played by Ryan Reynolds, was for most comic book nerds the talking point of the film, given how popular the character is, but Fox executives decided that his character had to be toned down in order not to detract from Hugh Jackman's presence. Thus, The Merc with The Mouth is turned into a genetic experiment in the final reel who, get this, has his mouth sewn shut. Oh, and director Gavin Hood had frequent spats with Fox's infamous former executive Tom Rothman, who had the sets painted a lighter, less imposing colour when Hood was away for a few days.