10 Movies That Were Almost WAY Darker

Toy Story is perhaps cinema's greatest rebuke to the phrase "the perfect movie doesn't exist," and it's frankly tough to imagine it being anything other than the stone-cold masterpiece that it is.

Yet the animated classic's development was strained enough that it risked being cancelled entirely, and counter to his work making The Santa Clause lighter, Jeffrey Katzenberg pushed for Toy Story to be darker and more cynical, and ultimately ended up pushing too hard.

The original conception of Woody (Tom Hanks) was decidedly more villainous, and even once the script was refined into more of a buddy comedy between him and Buzz (Tim Allen), Pixar head Ed Catmull said he was still a "sarcastic jerk."

And more to the point, in this version of the story he deliberately threw Buzz out of the window rather than by accident as in the final film.

An early test screening for Disney was disastrous enough to be dubbed "Black Friday" internally, resulting in Toy Story almost being canned altogether.

John Lasseter and co. had just two weeks to right the ship, returning with a new draft of the script which massively lightened the tone, and also introduced one of the film's most memorable flourishes - Buzz having no idea that he's a toy.