10 Times Hollywood Regretted Giving Directors All The Freedom

It's not surprising to find horror movies suffering at the hands of reshoots, studio-imposed cuts and a director working under tight constraints, but the behind-the-scenes tales of Mimic reveal just how odd, and vaguely insulting, Miramax's choices were.

It also subtly shows signs of the kind of shaky outfit the Weinstein brothers were running in the mid-90s in sheer terms of butchering movie projects. Guillermo Del Toro was already successful in his native country as well as internationally with his first horror film Cronos. The creature-feature director seemed a perfect fit for Mimic.

But immediately, Del Toro faced conflict with his new studio home. The promises that Miramax supposedly held for young, innovative storytellers was a lie, and the freedom you expected was a myth. Originally, he had wanted to make the film's giant killer bugs mutated tree beetles, but the studio disagreed. More troubling, the studio was equally hard-nosed about not casting a mixed-race couple as the leads. According to Del Toro's 2011 commentary, Weinstein said, "America is not ready for a mixed-race couple in a major motion picture."

Studio interference continued to the point where 'Harvey Scissorhands' came to the set to "teach" the director how to do his job, and ultimately the film was released with a lot of second unit footage that matched the jump-scare-on-repeat tone they wanted. Del Toro did manage to assemble a director's cut, removing many jump scares, but the damage was done.