10 Times Movies Panicked And CHANGED THE ENDING Just Before Release
6. Death Becomes Her
The final theatrical version of Robert Zemeckis' cult classic black comedy Death Becomes Her was quite different from what he originally shot, and this is especially true with regard to its ending.
The original ending was considerably more charitable to immortal rivals Madeline (Meryl Streep) and Helen (Goldie Hawn), who are shown to be miserable with their eternal life but still very much in one piece.
Test audiences felt this ending didn't give the duo a sufficient punishment for their misdeeds throughout the film.
And so Zemeckis came up with a new ending where Madeline and Helen, now grotesque husks of their former selves, attend Ernest's (Bruce Willis) funeral and fall down some stairs, shattering into pieces.
According to one of the film's VFX artists, Alex Seiden, the sequence was shot just weeks before its July 1992 release, giving him precious little time to complete the complicated final effects shot of Madeline and Helen's disembodied heads talking to one another.
But Seiden pulled it off, and the scene is such a fittingly insane note on which to end the movie - not to mention visually stunning - that you'd never know it was such a late-stage revision.
Even with the tight deadline, Death Becomes Her went on to win an Oscar for Best Visual Effects.