11 Movies That Made It Up As They Went Along (But Were Awesome Anyway)

10. Jaws

The story of Jaws' production is a notorious one already, what with the malfunctioning (and surprisingly expensive) fake shark that hilariously didn't work in water and Steven Spielberg's necessary inventiveness to get around it. But there was alot more to the production tale. Or a lot less, more specifically.

As well as making life difficult by insisting that they film on the open ocean, Spielberg started off from the even more difficult point of not actually having a completed script or complete cast (including the shark). He essentially made it up as he went along.

The production went out of control, taking 159 days instead of the planned 55, but the delays and the shark errors allowed the script to be refined and finished and scenes to be shot more artfully to conceal the shark. The result is one of the single greatest monster movies of all time, the reason lots of people fear open water and the inspiration for hundreds of terrible shark movies. It remains the granddaddy of them all.