10 Fascinating Backstories Behind Famous Movies

The Truman Show is one of those rare films that managed to seamlessly blend the two genres of drama and comedy; Peter Weir's film is genuinely hilarious, mainly thanks to the performance of its leading man, Jim Carrey, but it's also a picture with huge emotional weight, too.

The Truman Show didn't always exist in such an incarnation, however; the film and its genius premise emerged from a speculative script of a far more downbeat and depressing nature - one that was originally titled "The Malcolm Show" and would have curbed much of the humour that made the final film so memorable.

Malcolm... doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?

Title aside, though, the spec - penned by Andrew Niccol - didn't have the story we all know at its core, what with it being more of a paranoid thriller in the science-fiction vein, set in New York. When director Peter Weir became attached as director, he asked Niccol to rewrite the script to make it less dark and more funny, as the studio envisioned an actor like Jim Carrey in the lead role.

Niccol removed the sci-fi trappings and tweaked the core idea of the film, relocating the action to the fictional town of "Seahaven." It took him a whopping sixteen drafts to get it right, apparently (jeez!).

In theory, then, as brilliantly cinematic and timely The Truman Show appeared to be on the surface when it arrived in 1998, it took a hell of a lot of work to get it to that perfect place.