10 Original Endings That Would Have Ruined Great Movies
3. Election (1999)

The Ending We Got: After getting divorced and humiliated in front of everybody he knows, Matthew Broderick, a former teacher, leaves Nebraska and heads to New York City to fulfil his lifelong dream. There, he gets a nice job as a tour guide at a museum. Reese Witherspoon goes to Georgetown University where she continues to be hated by the student body because she's really easy to hate, though Matthew one day sees her climbing into a limousine and goes nuts for a moment, hurling a soda cup at the vehicle. That's about it.
The Original Ending:Well, it turns out that none of that happened, and that Mr. McAllister never got to New York City. He remained in town and got a job working as a car salesman. This ending is actually the one that stays true to Tom Perrotta's original novel, and it's not necessarily a bad one; it just doesn't work quite as well because the entire movie is kind of a bum note anyway, and we need the breathing room. Test audiences agreed, and so a new theatrical ending was written to replace this one.