From "Shrek" To "The Wizard Of Oz", Here Are 11 Films That Have Some Seriously Expensive Deleted Scenes

Five weeks of shooting left on the cutting room floor.

There are always parts of a film that end up on the cutting room floor. Sometimes, these are hugely expensive scenes or large parts of the movie, which burn a giant hole in the budget.

BBC One

Here are 11 movies that shot some seriously expensive scenes that didn't even make it into the film...

1. The Wizard of Oz

Loew's, Inc.

After an early preview of the movie, it was determined to be around 20 minutes too long. The first scene to be axed was a dance number called the Jitterbug Dance. In the scene, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Lion, and the Tin Man are attacked by these bug-type "rascals" in the haunted woods that give people the "jitters." 

The scene itself took five weeks to shoot and cost $80,000 to make – in today's terms that's around $1.7m! All that remains of the scene is a blurry recording of the filming, and I warn you, it's pretty creepy. 

Have a look here:

youtube.com

2. World War Z

Paramount Pictures

This film was never intended to have a huge $200m budget, but I guess that's what happens when a new pair of screenwriters are brought in to essentially re-write the entire third act. What it meant was pretty much an entire sequence shot in Budapest was deleted, and Brad Pitt's character, instead of heading to Russia which was originally planned, goes to Wales where the whole vaccine plot takes place. 

The original ending apparently made no reference to the discovery of a vaccine and ended with Brad Pitt's character on a mission to win back his wife. In the deleted storyline, there was a huge battle entitled, The Battle of Moscow – no wonder it was such a costly edit. 

You can see a few clips of it here:

youtube.com

3. Superman Returns

Warner Bros. Pictures

The 2006 Bryan Singer movie was released without the five-minute opening segment which apparently cost around $10m to shoot. The sequence shows Kal-El returning to Krypton in a spaceship. While there was no speaking in the scene, it somehow cost an extraordinary amount of money, while not seeming relevant enough to keep.

Watch the scene here:

youtube.com

4. Little Shop of Horrors

Warner Bros.

When adapting the Broadway musical to the screen, the directors initially wanted to pay homage to the source material and have an ending that mirrors the original plot. Thus, Warner Bros. spent $5m on the film's finale, which made it the most expensive Warner Bros. movie of its time. 

Sadly, test audiences were totally put off by the dark nature of the 23-minute ending sequence in which Rick and Ellen are brutally killed, as the producer, David Geffen recalled: "For every musical number, there was applause, they loved it, it was just fantastic… until Rick and Ellen died, and then the theatre became a refrigerator, an ice box."

The terrible audience reaction forced their hand, and the costly sequence was removed. Thankfully, Warner Bros. released directors cut with the original ending in 2012.

Check it out here:

youtube.com

5. Solo: A Star Wars Story

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

This movie had a rather chaotic filming process, so much so that after four months of production, shooting was paused, and the directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, were fired. In came Ron Howard to steady the ship, to put it lightly. 

With a four-month extension on production, Ron ended up reworking, reshooting, and cutting so much that he eventually made 70% of the movie which earnt him a sole director credit. But replacing minutes upon minutes of footage is not cheap, and these reshoots, cuts, and added scenes – not to mention the personnel additions – raised the budget in excess of $250 million. 

Have a look at some of the deleted scenes here:

youtube.com

6. Back to the Future

Paramount Pictures

The costly scene in Back to the Future was more like costly scenes. That's because initially, it wasn't Michael J. Fox playing Marty McFly, but Eric Stolz. Eric was let go six whole weeks into production. 

That's six weeks that they had to just bin, a costly cutting job considering they'd have to reshoot all the same scenes but with Michael. The decision to get Michael in cost the studio $4m in scrapped footage, but ultimately paid off big time.

7. Cleopatra

20th Century Studios

Speaking of chaotic productions, Cleopatra may take the biscuit! The whole shoot was an unmitigated disaster, and one part of this was the location itself. Director Rouben Mamoulian had initially tried to film in London until they realised that it was a pretty futile task to replicate ancient Rome there. 

Over a few months, they spent millions of dollars trying to film in London – a monumental cost for the time. After these months they'd only got about 10 minutes of the movie shot. 

So, they decided to get rid of Mamoulian and pretty much all of the cast. Joseph L. Mankiewicz was brought in to write a whole new script in a different filming location – Rome. All of this backtracking was a factor in the ballooning budget, which ended potentially as high as $60 million (nearly $600m now). 

8. Ghostbusters (2016)

Sony Pictures Releasing

If you'd have seen this film and stayed to the end, then you'd have noticed some snippets of a Chris Hemsworth dance number during the closing credits. Well, that's actually from a whole scene that was supposed to be in the film. It took up two whole days of production not even including rehearsal time. 

After some unconvincing test audience showings, they decided to scrap the entire scene and put some of it in at the credits. All of that wasted time cost the production seven figures, which didn't help the already hefty budget that came to $144 million. 

Watch it here:

youtube.com

9. Gangster Squad

Warner Bros. Pictures

The deleted scene in Gangsta Squad – a shootout in Grauman’s Chinese Theater – not only cost millions but also delayed the release of the film. The decision was made in light of a recent mass shooting at a cinema prior to the film's release. They therefore decided to give the shootout a new location, as Josh Brolin alluded to:

"It's still a violent replacement. It just happens in Chinatown. It's just as violent. It just doesn't remind you of this thing that happened. It's probably going to anyway because everyone knows it's been replaced."

10. Sonic the Hedgehog

Paramount Pictures

You may remember seeing the preliminary shots of Sonic when the film was being marketed, mainly because the internet was awash with people criticising the lack of likeness to the original game. This outrage left the studio with no real other option other than to reanimate the character, at quite the cost. 

Initial rumours online suggested that the redesign cost an outrageous $35 million. However, a source close to the production team suggested that it cost less than $5 million – still a very substantial fee. 

Check out the original trailer here:

youtube.com

11. Shrek

DreamWorks Pictrures

Shrek had more than one stumbling block in its production. First of all, was the death of Chris Farley, who had initially been cast to play the ogre. Then in came Mike Myers to replace him. Mike asked the team to redo some of the dialogue in order to adapt to his comedic style and set to work with the voiceover. 

Once he'd recorded all the dialogue, he was shown a rough, not fully animated version, but he found a problem – his accent. So, Mike requested that he redo all of his dialogue, and that's where Shrek's Scottish brogue was born.

The new accent did require some significant reanimation work, however, which reportedly cost Dreamworks $4 million!

Watch some of his original audio here:

youtube.com

What are some other hugely expensive deleted scenes? Let us know in the comments below!