10 Movies That Changed Drastically Midway Through Production

An oft-forgotten sci-fi film from the mid-1980s, Enemy Mine stars Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr as a human and an alien, respectively, who must team up in order to survive a hostile planet.

Like WarGames, the movie started shooting with a director who was then let go due to creative differences. Originally, Richard Loncraine was the man behind the camera, but he failed to deliver the goods and was subsequently replaced. Loncraine's film reportedly looked very cheap, with his directorial style not selling the otherworldy nature of the environments and alien characters. The film basically looked like what it was: a bunch of adults playing dress-up in the wilderness.

At this stage, the executives at Fox had a big decision to make: write off the millions of dollars they'd already spent on production and put the movie on the shelf, or start afresh with a new director at the helm?

In hindsight, they made the foolish decision (the film ultimately flopped at the box-office) to soldier on, bringing in Wolfgang Petersen to try and salvage the project. Petersen was completely unhappy with everything Loncraine had shot, insisting that the existing locations, costumes, and footage could not be used.

As a result, Enemy Mine was mostly re-built from scratch, sending it wildly over budget, and while Petersen's movie looked surprisingly polished, it could not recoup its steep, steep costs.

-

Any other films that had to be sent to movie surgery? Let us know in the comments section!