10 Great Movies That Had AWFUL Test Screenings

Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas is such a peerlessly brilliant masterpiece that it's tough to consider the film bombing with test audiences, but while doing press for The Irishman in 2019, the filmmaker confirmed that its first screening with a real audience was rough to say the least.

The gangster epic was screened in Orange County, California, which at the time was an ultra-conservative haven and so perhaps not the best place to screen a violent crime thriller.

As such, according to screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, roughly 70 people walked out of the screening due to its strong violence, leaving Warner Bros. executives "terrified" of Goodfellas' commercial prospects.

But Scorsese himself credits the test screening process with letting him know audience tolerance levels, in turn prompting him to tone the film's violence down - especially the sequence where Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) is stabbed to death by Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci).

One of the film's producers, Barbara De Fina, nevertheless remarked that other screenings left the audience angry, enough that the filmmakers ended up hiding from them in a bowling alley, and one audience member even wrote "F**K YOU!" on their comment card.

Thankfully the volatile test screening reactions didn't result in the studio overcorrecting and enforcing major edits upon Scorsese, and the rest is history.