10 Movies That Changed Drastically Midway Through Production

7. Payback

Payback Mel Gibson
Paramount Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures

Shortly after director Brian Helgeland had finished the principal photography phase of his 1999 crime drama, the powers-that-be realised that the film had a problem: the main character - Mel Gibson's Porter - was too unlikeable.

Gibson's own production company - Icon - as well as distributor Paramount, thought that the film was too edgy overall, and needed some extra work to lighten things up. They returned to Helgeland with this request, but he refused, reluctant to knowingly compromise his original vision. Consequently, he was fired, and production designer John Myhre was drafted in as a replacement.

From here, roughly a third of the film was re-worked. Actor Kris Kristofferson was brought in to play an entirely new villain character, Porter was softened up significantly, and a happier ending was crafted. The changes were so huge that Helgeland considered taking his name off the film, but in the end, he remained as the credited director.

Ultimately though, Helgeland got some "payback" of his own, when his original cut was released in 2007 and received a much more positive response than the theatrical cut.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!