8 Great Movies Saved By Ridiculously Last Minute Changes
7. The Original Ending Was Removed (A Week After Release) - The Shining
Stanley Kubrick doesn't do things by halves. So when he wants to make a last minute change to one of his films, he does it after the film has already gone on general release.
The ending of The Shining is nothing shy of masterful - after Danny and his mother escape, leaving Jack to freeze to death in the maze, we cut to inside the Overlook Hotel, slowly zooming in on a photograph of the 1921 4th of July Ball, which features Jack himself front-and-centre. Chills every time, along with a fair bit of head-scratching.
In Kubrick's original cut, however, there was a further scene that picks up with Danny and Wendy after their scarring experience; hotel manager Mr. Ullman visits the pair in hospital to tell Wendy that Jack's body wasn't found and give Danny a tennis ball just like the one that lured him into Room 237. It asks more questions than it answers - we still have no clue what the malicious power behind the events are - but puts the onus most certainly on the ghostly hotel, rather than the family dynamic and Jack's madness.
Kubrick only realised this wasn't the best resolution a week into the film's theatrical run. Rather than lamenting his mistake and releasing a Director's Cut down the line, he immediately forced projectionists to remove the sequence and, for completion, return it to the studio for destruction. All that remains of the scene now is a couple of grainy stills.