Between the scriptwriting process and the completed theatrical release, a film goes through numerous changes, rewrites, shifts, and at times complete reshoots. Even after the film is released, the director could continue working on additional changes, including alternate endings to be released in future home media releases or even as entirely separate films from the director's cut.

Alternate Endings

Serious concerns, including profanity, violence, sex, and disrespectful humor are areas that could require toning down in order for a film to qualify for release domestically and internationally. How often does a movie's entire ending have to be altered to meet the criteria?

Altering the way a movie ends obviously has large implications for the response of an audience, reported WhatCulture.

The film could make or break the whole experience before its closing moments. At times, your project's sign-off is easily executed and organic as the breeze. Other scenarios need quite more finesse with regard to sticking the landing, reported Cinema Blend.

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Here are examples of such:

1. 'Blade'

The Marvel vampire role Morbius will get his own movie starring Jared Leto next year, drawn out of Sony's Spider-Man films. But Morbius nearly made his big-screen debut over 20 years ago, which was many years prior to Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man picture.

1998's Blade nearly ended with a short Morbius cameo that would have laid a sequel's foundation. It is already regarded as one of the foundational texts of modern superhero films, reported Screen Crush.

2. 'Clerks'

In the theatrical ending of "Clerks," Protagonist Dante (Brian O''Halloran) gets direction in his life after Silent Bob straightforwardly remarks the moral of the film directly to his face. He prepares to close his shop for the day with hopeful optimism for the man.

After Dante resolved differences with Randal and Randal leaves, a new customer enters the shop and suddenly guns Dante to kill him off in cold blood for the cash register's money.

3. 'Gone with the Wind'

The theatrical cut of this film starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable nearly appeared quite differently from Rhett Butler's iconic ending line "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" following Scarlett O'Hara's appeal to him to stay with her in Atlanta.

An alternate script of the film was unearthed in 2014, in which Scarlett, in turn, comes off confident that Rhett will return to her someday. The ending does retain Scarlett's decision to return home to Tara, putting off ruminating over difficult matters until tomorrow.

4. 'Unfriended: Dark Web'

The film is hardly a cinematic masterpiece, but the sequel to 2014's Unfriended appeared to have played a game of releasing multiple endings at once.

Theaters were sent two versions of the film with identified locations issued a directive to screen either version of the film. In one version, the central character Matias is buried alive inside a coffin, attempting to call his girlfriend, Amaya. In the second version, Amaya wakes up alone in Matias' apartment and discovered a hole in her skull.

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