10 Movies That Needed Reshoots For INSANE Reasons
4. The Film Stock Was Ruined - Stalker
Andrei Tarkovsky's masterful sci-fi film Stalker is such a confident, finessed work of cinema that it's tough to believe it went through the fresh hell of being basically shot twice - at least twice, even.
Tarkovsky spent a year shooting Stalker's many outdoor scenes before it was discovered that the film stock had been improperly developed, rendering it unusable.
Tarkovsky was so crestfallen by this revelation that he considered abandoning the film altogether, though ultimately vowed to start over, firing cinematographer Georgy Rerberg and replacing him with Alexander Knyazhinsky.
According to the film's production designer Rashit Safiullin, the do-over differs significantly from the original version, and some reports even claim that by the time Stalker was completed, Tarkovsky had actually shot it three times in total.
Either way, the end result speaks for itself - a peerless entry into the genre that's regarded by many as its filmmaker's crowning achievement.