10 Movie Endings You Can No Longer See

4. World War Z

Scream 2022
Paramount Pictures

World War Z's lead character is fairly standard zombie movie stuff; Brad Pitt's family man Gerry happens to be a former United Nations investigator but he's just trying to keep his family safe. The closing moments of film feature Gerry arriving in Wales to be reunited with his wife and daughters, and a montage of sequences that show how humanity fights against the zombie horde in the future. It's more than a little odd, and sort of comes out of left field, leaving World War Z without the big climax you’d expect from a big budget zombie flick.

Reason being is that this wasn’t the intended conclusion, and that the montage we see features already shot footage for the original and much darker ending. An entire third act of the film saw Gerry fighting his way through the Russian tundra but when the studio were shown what was being pieced together they were unhappy with the disconnect. Gerry had gone from warm family man to a grizzled, bearded zombie killing badass and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Presented with options, they decided to come up with something else rather than soldier on.

Thus, the original ending of the film was never quite finished. What did exist was excised into oblivion with only thin slices existing in the final cut - so whilst we can get a taste of what could have been, we can only wonder about the rest.

Contributor
Contributor

The Red Mage of WhatCulture. Very long hair. She/they.