Movies That Were Majorly Changed After Test Screenings

As moviegoers, we generally think of the films we see in the theater as complete products, whether they've arrived via the unimpeded vision of a filmmaking genius or the storytelling-by-committee approach of a group of studio executives. Most of the time, a movie is a movie, and we can't do anything about it. Unless, that is, we are invited to take part in the market research exercise known as the test screening. 

For decades now, studios have trotted out nearly complete versions of upcoming films to a select few audience members, and asked them for feedback. Sometimes that feedback can lead to a tweak here or an edit there; other times, test audience feedback is so intense and unanimous that the film in question could be headed for a serious overhaul. Whether you know it or not, this was the case for some of the biggest films you've ever seen, from action blockbusters to major book adaptations. Let's take a look at some of the biggest changes ever made to movies based on the reactions of a test screening audience.

"Fatal Attraction" remains one of the most successful thrillers of the 1980s, a film that launched Glenn Close into stardom and earned six Academy Award nominations. The film is still a memorable, tense psychological thrill ride thanks to the incredible lead performances of Close and Michael Douglas, and to key moments like the infamous boiled rabbit, but according to Close it was actually originally going to end in an even darker way than it ultimately did. Remember the scene in which Dan goes to Alex's apartment and they fight over a kitchen knife? Well, Alex was supposed to use that moment to get Dan's prints on the knife — which she would then kill herself with and use to frame him for her murder. Test audiences had something else in mind.

"The original ending was a gorgeous piece of film noir. She kills herself, but makes sure that his prints are all over the knife, and he gets arrested," Close told Movieline. "He knows he didn't do it, but he's going to jail anyway. But audiences wanted some kind of cathartic ending, so we went back months later and shot the ending that's in the movie now." A different ending, in which Dan and his wife Beth fight Alex until Beth shoots her, was added.

"Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" and its source material, the "Scott Pilgrim" graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley, developed simultaneously, with O'Malley releasing the final volume of his story just weeks before Edgar Wright's film hit theaters. That meant Wright and company did not necessarily have a concrete ending from the source material to go by when they wrote the film, and that meant an ending that created some trouble at test screenings. 

The original ending of the film featured Scott staying with Knives Chau, his girlfriend in the beginning of the film, rather than being with Ramona Flowers, but according to Wright, this created arguments during the testing process.

"The way that we'd originally written it, which wasn't quite right, is we were trying to do a 'Graduate' or 'Heartbreak Kid'-style ending," Wright told EW. "To tell the honest truth, Ellen Wong [who plays Knives] was so lovely and so charming that it just made me feel horrible even doing that ending. So the ending we did have was neither here nor there."

When the test screenings didn't go well, Wright, O'Malley, and co-writer Michael Bacall went back and wrote a new ending in which Knives encourages Scott to be with Ramona.

Neil Marshall's brutal subterranean horror flick "The Descent" is a film that changed not so much because of traditional test audiences, but because of the test that was its release in the U.K., which happened more than a year before the film finally made its way to the States. "The Descent" is a relentless, grimy thrill ride full of gore and creature thrills, and its U.K. ending drove its sense of dread and darkness all the way through to the final moments, as the film ends with the reveal that Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), the last survivor of the cave, only dreamed that she'd escaped, and was in reality still sitting in the dark, imagining her dead daughter sitting across from her. 

By the time the U.S. release was looming, audiences had given enough feedback saying they found the ending too bleak, and distributor Lionsgate asked for a change. So Marshall cut the final minute of the film, allowing Sarah to escape the cave for real, even if she did hallucinate one of her dead friends sitting next to her in the car to give the audience one last scare.

"Rollerball" sounds like the kind of film that might work well now. Director John McTiernan, who helped give birth to the action movie as we know it with classics like "Die Hard" and "Predator," set out to remake a cult classic from director Norman Jewison about an ultra-brutal futuristic sport. The film could have combined top-notch filmmaking and casting with sci-fi spectacle and enough violence and nudity to keep audiences who loved R-rated action coming back for more. That was the plan, anyway. 

"Rollerball" seemed to be in trouble from the beginning, when McTiernan drew internet ire for opting to change the futuristic setting of the original film and ditching the first script. Then came test screenings in the spring of 2001. The response was terrible, thanks in no small part to an extremely negative review from Ain't It Cool News, and the studio went into damage control mode. The release date was pushed to 2002, McTiernan conducted two weeks of reshoots to refine certain scenes, and the studio mandated that the film be cut to make a PG-13 rating, hoping younger audiences would respond to it. This meant all of the nudity and a good deal of the violence were toned down. "Rollerball" was ultimately a critical and commercial failure.

It's now considered one of Martin Scorsese's best films, but members of the original test screening audience for "Goodfellas" walked out in disgust. The reactions were instant and visceral, with several people leaving in the opening moments of the film as Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) violently stabs Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) to death, and they rattled studio executives. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly in 2019, Scorsese reflected on the test screening process, saying, "I'm in the process of making the film. I screen it for some people, they go 'maybe you don't need that,' and maybe I do things, or maybe not." 

Following the "Goodfellas" screening, Scorsese began tweaking the movie's edit. Working directly with editor Thelma Schoonmaker, the two determined precisely how many stab wounds the Batts character could sustain on film before it became gratuitous and relegated the rest to off-screen sound effects and reactions from Henry Hill (Ray Liotta).

Not all screening comment cards resulted in cuts to the film, however. Scorsese revealed that while the violence was too much for viewers, they loved Scorsese's real-life mother in the role of Mrs. DeVito, Tommy's mother. Their feedback saved the heartwarming sequence from the cutting room floor, and the final result is one of the greatest gangster movies of all time.

As Dante (Brian O'Halloran) tells Randal (Jeff Anderson) in the 1994 cult classic "Clerks," "Life is a series of down endings." That was certainly true of "Clerks" itself, as originally imagined by writer-director Kevin Smith. When first screened at the International Feature Film Market, the film ended with convenience store clerk Dante being shot and killed by a robber. Based on advice garnered from that screening, however, Smith cut out that final scene to end the film when Randal leaves the store.

Kevin Smith admitted he hadn't really known how to end a movie at that point in his career, but he brought the idea back for a meta joke in "Clerks III." In this third installment of the franchise, based on Smith's own 2018 heart attack, Randal has an existential crisis when he survives a massive cardiac event but discovers he's never done anything substantial with his life. 

The plot then follows an art-imitating-life narrative arc in which Randal attempts to make a movie about working at the Quick Stop, titled "Inconvenience." At one point Randal contemplates killing off Dante's character, to which Dante reacts with his signature incensed hilarity. It won't ever be considered mainstream popular, but members of Smith's slacker generation fan base are sure to get the joke.

"Sunset Boulevard" was released in the golden age of cinema. Directed by the legendary Billy Wilder, it's considered one of the greatest films of all time, from the first frame to the last. At the initial test screening for the film, however, its iconic opening confused audiences. Originally, instead of the shot of Joe Gillis (William Holden) floating facedown in a pool, the movie opens to his corpse sitting up in the morgue and beginning the narration of his story. The first (and only) people to see this cut, however, found it comedic rather than dark. 

Ironically, the film was initially conceived as a comedy, as Wilder told The Paris Review in 1996. "For a long time I wanted to do a comedy about Hollywood," he said. "Instead it became a tragedy of a silent-picture actress, still rich, but fallen down into the abyss after talkies," he continued.

With the film in its final form – sans morgue — it rattled the film industry. Barbara Stanwyck, Wilder said, bowed down to Gloria Swanson for her performance as Norma Desmond, while head of MGM Louis B. Mayer thought it would forever mar Hollywood's reputation. "I told him just what he could do," said Wilder.

Thankfully the film went on to be a big hit, earning Oscars for its screenplay, set decoration, and music. Over 70 years later, "Sunset Boulevard" is one picture that never got small.