10 Insane Ways Movies Got Sabotaged
9. Marilyn Monroe Was Fired, Re-Hired & Then Died - Something's Got To Give
There's making a mistake, and then there's scoring an embarrassing and extremely unfortunate own goal during production of the incomplete 1962 comedy Something's Got to Give.
The Marilyn Monroe-starring project had problems right out of the gate, with director George Cukor forced to shoot around Monroe for roughly a month due to a litany of medical issues haranguing the actress.
Soon enough the shoot ran wildly over schedule and budget, and worse still, scenes were being constantly rewritten as frustrated Monroe. Six weeks into filming, Monroe was again absent due to illness, and at Cukor's urging, Fox fired her from the film.
Numerous actresses were invited to replace Monroe - including Kim Novak and Shirley MacLaine - but turned it down, and Monroe's co-star Dean Martin ultimately refused to continue without her.
As a result, Monroe was eventually re-hired by Fox with a beefed-up salary and under the condition that Cukor be replaced as director. With that, shooting was set to resume later that year, but before it could, Monroe passed away unexpectedly.
The film was then abandoned and reworked into a new movie with an almost entirely new cast and crew, Move Over, Darling, which was a commercial success. Only select scenes and images from the original film, however, have ever been released.
While we can't say for sure that Monroe might've lived to complete the film had she not been fired and production temporarily shut down, the fickleness of firing and then re-hiring her suggested a film suffering from a brutal lack of executive confidence.