10 Movie Endings Actors Didn't Know Were Going To Happen
8. Matthew Is A Pod Person - Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)
1978's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a rarest of remakes that arguably betters its predecessor, particularly with its bleaker ending, which sees protagonist Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) revealing to Nancy Bellicec (Veronica Cartwright) that he too has been replaced by a Pod Person.
The moment that Matthew meets up with Nancy and suddenly lets out an alien scream while pointing at her is supremely, brilliantly jarring for the audience, but also for actress Nancy Cartwright, who was intentionally kept in the dark about how the scene would play out.
In a 2018 with the Hollywood Reporter, director Philip Kaufman revealed that the film's ending still wasn't locked down during shooting.
And once screenwriter W. D. Richter and Donald Sutherland both agreed with Kaufman that a downbeat finale was the way to go, they conspired to withhold this information from Cartwright to ensure her horrified reaction was as genuine as possible.
And so, Cartwright's shocked recoil at Sutherland's reaction is 100% real - though we'll assume her subsequent distress is just some good old-fashioned acting.
Still, Cartwright got more of a heads up than the executives at studio United Artists, who didn't find out about the grim ending until Kaufman screened a cut of the movie for them.