10 Movie Characters You Won't Believe Were Nearly Killed Off

4. Drover - Australia

People may have described The Lord Of The Rings as a glorified New Zealand tourism video, but that tongue-in-cheek observation is only funny because there's so much more to Peter Jackson's trilogy than its sweeping landscape shots. Baz Luhrmann's Australia was a lot less thinly veiled, feeling like an almost three hour highlight of why you should visit down under. The film's an ill-conceived mess, with the accusations of clashes between director and studio fuelling the critics' distaste. The conventionally accepted story is that Luhrmann's boasted a very downbeat ending that test audiences hated, prompting 20th Century Fox forcing him to completely change the ending. The ending in question involved Hugh Jackman's Drover (both his character's occupation and name so Luhrmann could go to lunch early one day) and specifically whether he was alive or not. In the finished film both Jackman and Nicole Kidman get to live happily ever after, but initially Drover would die. The studio, director and stars vehemently deny the test audience story (probably because the industry is always keen to downplay their role in the production process), but we definitely know there were multiple endings of the film shot, meaning that even if Luhrmann had full creative control Drover's fate was still undecided until the last minute.