10 Movie Characters Totally Changed During Production

Reshoots, rewrites and recasting.

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus Heath Ledger Johnny Depp Jude Law Colin Farrell
Sony

Making movies sure ain't easy, and no matter how rigidly set in stone a project might seem, there's always room for things to change from pre-production all the way through until the final stages of editing.

Take the upcoming Joaquin Phoenix-starring Joker, which the cast proudly admits was constantly re-written during filming, as the result of a collaborative process between writer-director Todd Phillips and his actors.

But things get especially interesting when an actor signs on to play a role only to have the nature of that character fundamentally altered, or perhaps even transformed into an entirely new character.

Just recently, Idris Elba was confirmed to be taking over Will Smith's Deadshot role in James Gunn's upcoming The Suicide Squad, but a few weeks later it was revealed that, in fact, Deadshot had been removed from the movie completely and Elba would now be playing an entirely new character.

It's pretty uncommon for actors' characters to be changed that drastically once the dotted line has been signed, but in the case of these 10 heroes and villains, each was shaped as a reaction to the actor's performance during filming, negative social media responses to the marketing, and of course, the ever-fickle tastes of test audiences.

Whether re-shot after the fact or simply "fixed" through editing, these 10 characters were all majorly re-worked before they finally hit screens, both for better and for worse (and very occasionally because there was no other option)...

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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.