10 Times Movies Went To Extreme Lengths For Scenes That Didn’t Make The Cut

The process of bringing a project to life on the big screen will always be a fluid and ever-changing beast. Either due to test audiences not responding as hoped or an idea not exactly clicking in situ like it appeared to on the page, an alarming amount of once nailed-on movie moments have found themselves unceremoniously stripped from a picture before opening night.

Now, in some cases, simply deciding not to commit to a particular section of dialogue or a sweeping shot of a setting in the lead-up to a pivotal moment isn't exactly deemed as a monumental waste of time and effort. However, there are still those sections and sequences that were fully realised in front of a camera that came at a hefty price, be that financially or physically, only to still wind up bumping shoulders with the rest of the scrap on the cutting room floor.

From a frankly scary amount of playing with literal fire for the sake of a scene, to a glut of sweet treats being discarded in response to real-life events, these extravagant film feats were ultimately all for nothing.

Were it not for the assassination of a certain President of the United States, we would most definitely be living in a world where one of the greatest satires ever forged ended with the mother of all custard pie fights.

However, said taking of JFK's life did come to pass, so a scene that came at a substantial financial cost did not. Or at least, it did not make an appearance in the finished article. This was largely due to a line in the scene involving US general Buck Turgidson screaming out, “our beloved president has been infamously struck down by a pie in the prime of his life! Are we going to let that happen? Massive retaliation!”, hitting a little too close to home.

The sequence itself, involving various world leaders coming to blows with the help of some custard delights, was all completely shot, with a whopping 2,000 Fortnum & Mason pies being dragged onto the sound stage to hurl at the actors' pleasure.

It's estimated that this huge set-piece cost somewhere in the region of $2 million to film as the actual destruction of desserts took between 1-2 weeks to get in the can. Luckily, fans of the feature were treated to images of the infamous pie finale year later. Despite the sheer amount of wasted dough, though, it's hard to argue with the studio's thought process in pressuring for Stanley Kubrick to rid the shots from his picture.