10 Most Expensive DELETED Movie Scenes Ever
6. Gangster Squad's Theatre Shootout Cost...Several Million Dollars
Period crime thriller Gangster Squad suffered a most unfortunate setback, as the deleted scene in question wasn't removed due to any distaste for how it turned out, but the unavoidable confluence of real-life events.
Several months after principal photography wrapped, the Aurora, Colorado cinema shooting took place, causing 12 deaths.
Trailers for Gangster Squad had already showcased a sequence in which gangsters emerged through the screen of a cinema and fired machine guns at the audience, prompting an intense PR backlash and ultimately forcing Warner Bros. to drop the sequence.
But because the scene was in fact the climax of the movie, there was no way to simply pull it out, and so, a new finale had to be conceived and shot, shifting the action to Chinatown.
Though we'll never know exactly how much money Warner Bros. lost by moving the movie's release date back four months when it was just six weeks away from release and had a marketing campaign in full swing, the re-shot ending reportedly cost "several million dollars."
To make matters worse, the film was a box office bomb, ensuring it most certainly wasn't money well spent.