10 Movies Totally Ruined By Test Audiences
4. 28 Days Later
Danny Boyle’s propulsive zombie flick was a shot in the arm in 2002, reviving the much-maligned subgenre with an uncompromising dark tone and terrifying new threats. Two words: fast zombies.
While everyone from Zack Snyder to the Zombieland creators owe a debt to screenwriter Alex Garland for that touch, not all of the Ex Machina scribe’s decisions made it to the screen. Thanks to test audiences, we were spared a brilliant, vicious ending far more in line with the film’s brutal atmosphere.
After his bloody melee revenge, slaughtering villainous soldiers to save the film’s only other survivors, our hero Jim was originally set to succumb to his wounds, dying in a hospital bed. This image would leave the film running full circle, plopping the protagonist right back where he began before learning anything of the plague ravaging the world outside.
Of course, test audiences prefer their horror with a Disney-appropriate ending, so we were graced with a cut showing him alive and well in the highlands waiting on rescue. Hopefully from a kinder set of soldiers than last time, that is…?