10 Movies That Actually Benefitted From Studio Interference
2. Get Out
Jordan Peele’s racially charged horror masterpiece sees Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris trapped by his girlfriend’s reprehensible family and nearly locked away in his own mind forever, with no control of his body. As we all know the film ends on one of recent cinema’s best fakeouts; as we see Chris stumbling away from his gruesome fate, the flashing lights of a police car can be seen approaching.
Chris’s heart - along with the audience’s - begins to sink. We’re all painfully aware of how a young black man will be treated at a scene of violence, regardless of the perpetrators. Seemingly resigned to a fate not much better than his last, Chris appears to give up… only for Peele to pull the rug out in glorious fashion and reveal it was Chris’s best friend Rod in his TSA car coming to the rescue. Back slaps all around!
It is common knowledge that Peele’s original ending saw Chris arrested and placed behind bars for the rest of his life; a bleak statement on the realities of the US prison system and how it affects primarily African American people.
Whilst the studio didn’t force Peele to change the ending - in fact, he thought it was too bleak even for his own sensibilities - they did front the money to reshoot the conclusion to the one we got. This is no small feat as extended shooting after the fact is a very expensive way to live your life; but thanks to Blumhouse’s insistence it would be worth the investment, we got the ending that satisfied us all immensely.