10 Times Actors Refused To Do Reshoots

If you don't know too much about the way movies are made, the word "reshoots" can immediately send alarm bells ringing.

To a casual observer, it might suggest that the studio discovered their new film is a mess during editing, and they're now desperately trying to salvage the doomed project.

Except, that's not really the case at all. Practically every major Hollywood blockbuster undergoes reshoots of some kind, and Marvel Cinematic Universe movies even have a few weeks of reshoots baked into their schedules before principal photography even begins.

Reshoots can allow filmmakers to capture crucial pickup shots and close gaps discovered during editing, and basically iron out any creative issues raised after test screenings.

While reshoots are often motivated by the concerns of bean-counting executives, they're not inherently a bad thing, even if there are certainly countless examples of them not going so well.

These 10 movies, for example, all called actors back to carry out necessary reshoots, only for the actors to refuse, due to their philosophical disagreements with the reshoots, their desire to be paid more money, or perhaps the simple fact that they just couldn't be bothered...

The production of Superman II was famously troubled, with original director Richard Donner being fired after roughly 75% of the sequel had already been shot.

His replacement, Richard Lester, ended up reshooting the vast majority of the film in order to attain a directorial credit, though many key crew members opted not to return for reshoots out of loyalty to Donner.

This included Gene Hackman, who played villain Lex Luthor and declined to reshoot his part for Lester. This required the new director to use body and vocal doubles to account for Hackman's absence in many scenes.

All of the footage featuring Hackman included in the movie was shot by Donner, while Lester filmed inserts with the aforementioned doubles where the actor's face wasn't visible.

Considering the obvious creative constraints caused by Hackman's unwillingness to return, Lester did a solid job of concealing it.

However, Donner's own "Donner Cut," finally released over 25 years later in 2006, is the far superior version of the movie, and crucially includes more of Hackman's performance.