10 Genius Times Studios Beat The Film Director

Walter Hill's 1979 action thriller The Warriors is a bonafide cult classic, yet during production Hill had some more adventurous ideas about the film's style.

Hill, a huge fan of comic books, wanted to divide the story into delineated chapters and have each chapter framed by an animated comic book panel, an idea which naturally gave studio Paramount pause.

But Paramount had two easy excuses to deny indulging Hill: firstly, the film was being produced on a small $4 million budget, and secondly, its release date was already firmly locked in, as Paramount was desperate to release it before a similarly-themed rival film, The Wanderers, later that year.

And so, with an unmovable release date, Paramount had no choice but to nix Hill's comic book ambitions, and The Warriors went on to gross more than five-fold its budget, while becoming a cult fave that's sold well on home video ever since.

Hill did however get to fulfill his ambitions eventually, with the 2015 Ultimate Director's Cut DVD featuring the proposed comic book panels.

However, given that the general fan response to this addition was predominantly negative, Paramount was clearly 100% right to refuse him in the first place.