20 Horror Movie Endings We Almost Got

14. The Russian Zombie Battle - World War Z

It's no secret that World War Z went through an absolutely hellacious post-production process, with the majority of the film's original third act being cut and replaced with something entirely new.

Originally, the finale saw protagonist Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) flown to Russia where he was drafted into an army to fight zombies, leading to an epic battle in a snow-covered Red Square against the undead horde.

Gerry then makes contact with his wife Karin (Mireille Enos), who is revealed to have struck up a relationship of necessity with a soldier (Matthew Fox) to keep her family safe, at which point Gerry begins his journey back to the U.S. to liberate them. The End.

Ultimately it was felt that the battle painted Gerry as too much of a "warrior hero" and the wife's storyline with the soldier was too messy for a big-budget horror blockbuster, and so Lost's Damon Lindelof was hired to cook up a new ending.

This revised finale, shot at considerable expense, ditched the wife subplot and opted for a more pared-down climax in which Gerry discovers a way to outpace the zombies in a WHO facility in Cardiff.