20 Things You Didn't Know About Interstellar

15. The Original Ending Was "Much More Straightforward"

Interstellar ship
Warner Bros. Pictures

The idea for Interstellar was first conceived in the late 2000s, at which point the great Steven Spielberg came close to directing.

Around this same time, Jonathan Nolan - brother of Chris, and collaborator on many of his movies - was tapped to write the script. Then, when Spielberg dropped out, Jonathan pushed for his older sibling to assume directorial duties, leading to the version of Interstellar we all know today.

Understandably though, this final version is a lot different from the version that Jonathan originally wrote, and some of the biggest changes can be found in the ending of the film.

In 2015, Jonathan explained that his original ending was "much more straightforward". It would've seen a wormhole collapse on Cooper, presumably eliminating the tesseract scene found in the final version, as well as Cooper's reunion with an elderly Murph.

A much darker conclusion by the sounds of it, but possibly a lot easier for audiences to wrap their minds around!

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.