10 Movies That Changed Drastically Midway Through Production
5. I'll Do Anything
The honour of "most bizarre change" on this list easily goes to James L. Brooks' 1994 comedy I'll Do Anything, which was dealt a major blow when test audiences reacted poorly to a significant aspect of the film.
With the project, Brooks wished to craft an old-fashioned musical, and wanted to include plenty of musical numbers peppered throughout the runtime. To that end, he brought in the likes of Prince, Carole King, and Sinéad O'Connor to record songs, and everything was shaping up quite nicely - that is, until a rough cut of the film was assembled and plonked in front of test audiences.
And unfortunately, the one thing they hated was the music. Naturally, Brooks was taken aback by this reaction, since he now had some major alterations to make. He basically had to pluck one of the core elements from his movie and fill in that hole with brand-new scenes, stripping the music entirely and heading back for reshoots to film some replacement footage.
The final cut was received relatively well so this re-jig wasn't a complete disaster, but going from a musical to a more straightforward comedy-drama can't have been easy.