10 Troubled Shoots That Resulted In Great Films
4. Ridley Scott Publicly Fell Out With The Crew - Blade Runner
Initially a straight adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electronic Sheep?, Blade Runner had a troubled development history before Ridley Scott even came on-board. Initial issues with the script meant that numerous and expensive rewrites were required until everyone was satisfied.
Whilst he doesn't have the douchebag reputation of David O'Russell or James Cameron, Ridley Scott's style of filming didn't gel with his American film crew. Scott proceeded to rub salt in the wound when he told a UK newspaper that he preferred working with British film crews. This led to a weird protest by the film crew in which they wore shirts with the slogan "Yes gov’nor my ass". Undeterred, Scott responded with a shirt with a slogan of his own: "Xenophobia sucks".
Scott's insistence on getting the film's aesthetic right (and on budget) meant that filming conditions were terrible and exhausting. Eventual budget overruns and schedule delays resulted in pressure from the studio. After a disastrous test screening, studio executives forced Scott to insert an unnecessary voice-over in the film, which didn't really do much to help the film critically or commercially at the time. In fact, there were so many things going against the film that the definitive version of Blade Runner that Scott wanted everyone to see didn't come out until 2007, a full 25 years after the film's initial release.