50 Fascinating Facts About WWE in The 1980s
20. Vince & Hulk Spent 3 Hours Rewriting ‘No Holds Barred’
WWF pair Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon didn’t really care for Dennis Hackin’s original script for the No Holds Barred movie, so they locked themselves away in a hotel room and got busy redrafting the thing from beginning to end. There was a lot of money and possibly future movies hinging on the project, so McMahon and Hogan wanted it to be a smash hit that'd cement their place in Hollywood.
Later, Vince would admit that it wasn’t his finest hour. As it turned out, he only broke even on the project after various distribution and production costs weighed it down. No Holds Barred did pull $16m domestically on an $8m budget, but the WWF purse strings had been loose throughout. Therefore, McMahon felt a little bit disappointed by the financial outcome of his first major motion picture.
Would things have been worse had they stuck to Hackin's script? Maybe/maybe not, but Hulk and Vince didn't plan to take any chances. It's likely that many of the cheesiest moments in the film can be traced back to them. The infamous "dookie" scene has McMahon's toilet humour fingerprints all over it, for example.
There's more chaos to come out of No Holds Barred later on the list. You might not believe one of the things the WWF concocted for WrestleMania VI. Let's just say that 'The Ultimate Challenge' pitting Hulk vs. Ultimate Warrior was way better than what McMahon and pals left on the cutting room floor.
No Holds Barred didn't get a follow up, and Vince's movie dreams were pretty much shelved until the formation of WWE Films/Studios in 2002.