The most expensive deleted scenes in film history

Sometimes they give an unencumbered insight into a directorial vision that could have been. Other times it’s a relief they were cut.

‘World War Z’ director Marc Forster has said it’s unlikely audiences will ever see the original ending to his blockbuster, which included a long section set in Russia, more of Matthew Fox’s parajumper character and a D-Day-style invasion of the Oregon coastline.

[World War Z director talks alternative Russian ending]

Disappointed with what they saw, WWZ’s producers chose to reshoot the finale at great cost, leaving the initial third act with unfinished visual effects sitting somewhere in a studio vault and not, sadly, on the DVD which is released this week.

But the zombie epic isn’t the only film with what amounts to a multimillion-dollar deleted scene. Down the years Hollywood studios have wasted millions on sequences that never saw the light of day…
 

Superman Returns
Critics and audiences might have thought differently about Bryan Singer’s 2006 take on the Man Of Steel were he to have included his original opening, which according to legend cost $10 million and featured a unitard-wearing Supes (Brandon Routh) returning to the remains of his home planet in one of those cool crystal spaceships.
 
Gliding around the debris, he sees a large S carved into the rock, before feeling shonky because the entire thing is made up of – surprise, surprise – green Kryptonite.
 
The feel of the scene is – as many viewers have commented – more akin to Stanley Kubrick than comic book and the ethereal vibe certainly lends it gravitas.
 
But ultimately, we want to see Superman saving mankind on Earth, which is why – along with the differing tone – that Singer probably chose to eschew it.

Watch the full scene here.
 

The Brothers Grimm
“I cut out the most expensive scene in the movie.” That’s what director Terry Gilliam said about his flop, in which a deleted sequence shows CGI trees coming to life and attacking the heroes (Matt Damon and Heath Ledger).
 
Gilliam admitted he ditched the scene when his old Python comrade Terry Jones suggested it ruined the flow of the film.
 

Almost Famous
It’s no secret that writer/director Cameron Crowe loves to soundtrack his films liberally.
 
This semi-autobiographical tale is the apotheosis of that obsession, with the music budget reaching an amazing $3.5million (most films cost less than $1.5m).
 
But one song choice proved too far even for Crowe. In order to demonstrate the importance of music to his life, William (Patrick Fugit) plays his mother and assorted hangers-on Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven. The entire thing.
 

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Despite being punctuated by comedy, courtesy of his sister’s boyfriend’s air playing, it’s still basically just watching a bunch of people listening to a song. Crowe couldn’t afford to licence the tune and the scene remains a deleted curio.

Watch the full scene here.
 

Watchmen
When Zack Snyder took on the mantle of directing Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal comic book, his goal was always to stay as close to the source material as possible. It had already worked once before with ‘300’.
 
But ‘Watchmen’ is a slightly more complex beast and one of its many layers is the pirate comic-within-a-comic ‘Tales Of The Black Freighter’, which a young boy is reading on the streets of Moore’s epic.
 
Snyder initially wanted to include it. The film company didn’t, especially since the movie’s running time was already pushing three hours. Ultimately, Snyder shot the story as a 26-minute animation, with Gerard Butler leading the voice cast.
 
After dabbling with inserting it into the main narrative, it was instead released as a very pricey (30-50% more than average), straight-to-DVD bonus.
 

Little Shop Of Horrors
Those who saw the musical on Broadway will have been familiar with the original ending director Frank Oz shot for his 1986 screen adaptation starring Rick Moranis as a lowly garden shop worker who raises a soul-voiced plant with a taste for human flesh.
 
The 23-minute sequence cost $5 million and featured Audrey II and her clones taking over the world, with Seymour (Moranis) even feeding her his girlfriend (Ellen Greene) before being eaten himself.
 
Unsurprisingly, movie audiences didn’t much care for the frankly terrifying finale and it was changed to something a bit more upbeat. The original briefly made an appearance on a special edition DVD, before producer David Geffen removed it from view.
 
But for fans of this curious musical comedy, the sight of giant red-lipped cabbages eating everything and everyone in sight while a Broadway number plays in the background represents a missed opportunity to push the film even more leftfield.

Watch part of the scene here.

Check out the trailer for 'World War Z', below.