Cutting Room Floor Money: The Six Most Expensive Deleted Movie Scenes
Scenes are what make a movie, and they can, at times, make all the difference in a movie. Other than time, effort, perfect casting, and brilliant acting skills, another thing that makes a great movie scene are the economic resources at the disposal of the production teams. Sometimes the budget gets hiked to shoot certain iconic scenes, but if anything in the equality fails to add up, the scene might just be omitted from the film. Reasons can range from the lack of chemistry in a scene to crossing a time limit for a feature film. However, the money spent on such scenes is money lost unless it becomes a blockbuster through box office sales.
Here is a list of some of the most expensive deleted movie scenes.
3 The Wizard Of Oz (1939) - The Jitterbug Dance
Victor Fleming directed the 1939 fantasy musical called Wizard of Oz. This movie adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is one of the first movie productions to have one of the costliest deleted scenes.
The Jitterbug dance scene from this movie took about $80,000. This amount is a lot compared to the movie's budget - about $2.8 million. The Jitterbug was supposed to be depicted as a blue and pink mosquito-like creature which attacks Dorothy upon the command of the Wicked Witch. This was supposed to be followed by a dance sequence of about 6 minutes which took about five weeks to complete taking into account the rehearsals and the filming. Later this scene had to be omitted to keep the length of the film in check.
2 Back To The Future (1985) - Eric Stoltz Scenes
The Back to The Future movie franchise is another Hollywood classic. But Back to The Future had its share of expensive deleted scenes. This was in terms of not the length of the film but the replacement of a cast member.
Eric Stoltz's scenes in the movie were deleted because Sid Sheinberg, the head of Universal, refused to let him play the character of Marty McFly. However, by the time this conflict began, five weeks of shooting had already cost the team $4 million, which amounts almost to $9 million if adjusted according to inflation rates.
1 Ghostbusters (2016) - Dance Sequence
The comedy-fantasy movie called Ghostbusters, released in 2016 and directed by Paul Feig, featured the stunning Chris Hemsworth. This movie became quite popular because of the fun storyline and the presence of the Thor actor.
But there was a scene shot in this movie which was about Chris dancing alongside a horde of other side characters. When it got rejected by the test audience, this entire dance sequence was scrapped from the main movie, although it had cost a few million to create it. However, parts of this sequence were added to the credits scene at the end of the movie.
X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014) - Rogue’s Scenes
In X-Men: Days of Future Past’s theatrical cut, several scenes featuring Anna Paquin as the character Rogue were deleted. Paquin, however, did not go without compensation for performing in these scenes.
The reported amount of compensation that the production team had to pay Paquin was approximately $2.8 million. A longer cut of the movie called Rogue’s Cut was also released later, and the difference in duration was only a few minutes. The reason for deleting Rogue’s scenes seemed not to be a problem of the movie's length but the addition of too many subplots.
Cleopatra (1963) - Relocation to Rome
The romance epic, Cleopatra, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and released in 1963, became one of the first box office successes in Hollywood. However, it still could not rise to its hefty budget. The shooting of Cleopatra went through a horde of hurdles as the sets were created in London soon after which they were required to relocate to Rome and build the stylized sets all over again.
A considerable chunk of the money was spent on scenes that were ultimately cut out of the main film. Originally the movie was about 6 hours long because of which Joseph L. Mankiewicz was pressured by Fox studio to reduce it to 3 hours for the theatrical cut. Ultimately the theatrical cut turned out to be of about 4 hours, and one-third of the 6-hour movie was deleted.
The Raid 2 (2014) - Gang War Scene
The Raid 2, released in 2014, was an Indonesian crime action movie directed by Greth Evans. This was a sequel to another martial arts masterpiece called The Raid. The budget for Raid 2 was higher than the first one - about $4.5 million.
But around $270,000 out of this fancy budget went into making an extremely well-shot gang war scene, which was later deleted. The problem was with the overbearing length of the movie, which considerably crossed the limit of 150 minutes for the final cut.
Without the knowledge of such amazing scenes that were ultimately deleted, most of the movies mentioned in this list are Hollywood classics. But knowing how much money and effort went into the deleted scenes can change how a person feels about their favorite movie.
Source: Independent, WatchMojo.com, ScreenRant, WhatCulture
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