10 Movie Scenes Changed At The Very Last Minute

1. The Ambiguous Ending That Almost Never Was - The Shining

One of the most compelling movie questions of all time concerns what the ending of The Shining really means. That one lingering shot of Jack Nicholson beaming out of a photograph of the Overlook marked 1921 - an impossibility, by normal qualifiers - is easily one of the most famous final shots ever, chiefly because of its vague magic.

And yet, that was once not the final shot of the movie. In fact, it only became as important after the film was shipped to cinemas, which has to be some sort of record on the latest changes made to a release.

As originally conceived, the ending would have included a full epilogue set in a hospital, which Kubrick wrote as a means to reassure the audience that Wendy and Danny would be okay. He had a soft spot for them, according to his co-writer Diane Johnson, and determined that the audience would want to know that everything was back to normal.

But then, out of the blue, Kubrick had a change of heart after it had already premiered in LA and New York, deciding that the ending didn't work and insisted that all theatre projectionists cut the epilogue out and mail it back to Warner Bros, where they were almost all destroyed.