We don't just love a happy ending -- we demand it
Happily ever after: Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in 'Australia'.
Nicole Kidman's latest movie, Australia, opens in Ireland over the Christmas with a happy Hollywood ending tacked on by the studio against the wishes of its director, Baz Luhrmann.
A sweeping epic set in the outback, the film revolves around a passionate love affair between an aristocrat, played by Kidman, and a cattle drover played by Hugh Jackman, best known as Wolverine in the X-Men franchise.
In Luhrmann's original cut, Jackman dies at the end. This didn't go down well with audiences at test screenings who wanted the lovers to live happily ever after. Fearing that the downbeat ending would hurt Australia at the box office, 20th Century Fox insisted that Luhrmann do a rewrite. He resisted, but after "intense" discussions with his paymasters he capitulated.
Luhrmann's surrender on the issue has provoked accusations of selling out, but Hollywood has been screen-testing movies, and rewriting them to order, since the silent era. Groucho Marx deemed it a "brainstorm" when Irving Thalberg of MGM suggested the Marx Brothers take the script for A Night At The Opera on the road to gauge audience reaction. The entire movie was reworked around the chuckles of the live audiences.
Released five years later in 1942, Casablanca could have turned out an incoherent mess. It had an A-list cast led by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, but there was a constantly changing team of writers who were working on the hoof, barely keeping up with the production schedule.
One mooted ending featured Bogey and Bergman flying off into the sunset, but this was scrapped in favour of having Bergman depart with her husband, bound by duty more than love.
When Casablanca was in production the Allies invaded North Africa, and it was planned to add a closing scene showing Bogart and Claude Rains sailing to the battlefront with a troop of Free French soldiers.
However, Rains wasn't available, so the alternative ending was dropped. Weeks after the movie was finished, producer Hal Wallis came up with the memorable closing line: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship". Bogart was called back to dub it.
Ron Howard is one of Hollywood's most successful directors with a string of hits to his credit including Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and Cocoon.
When he came to make his first blockbuster, the mermaid fantasy Splash, Howard really tested his test-audience by showing them a four-hour rough cut.
Beginning with the marathon version, he screened it twice a week for eight weeks, using audience input to gradually cut it down to under two hours.
When Paramount test-screened Patriot Games, which featured Harrison Ford battling the IRA, audiences were confused by the ending, so the studio added extra footage to make the plot clearer.
While they were at it, studio officials gave audiences the opportunity to choose other possible twists, and incorporated some of the more popular ones.It was Paramount that came up with one of the most inspired switches of an ending.
The original climax to Adrian Lyne's adultery thriller Fatal Attraction is one of the most famous alternate endings of all time. Originally, the crazed bunny boiler played by Glenn Close ended the film by committing suicide and making it appear as if her former lover, played by Michael Douglas, had murdered her.
This went down badly with test audiences who'd spent most of the movie rooting for the Douglas character's persecuted wife (Anne Archer). The studio bowed to the audience and had the wife get her revenge by shooting dead Close's character.
Fans of Jennifer Aniston showed a sentimental streak when they objected to the original ending of The Break Up, a romantic comedy where she played opposite Vince Vaughn.
In the original cut, the relationship fails and the ex-couple meet at an art fair where each has a new partner who are look-alikes of the split pair.
However, in real life Aniston had recently divorced from Brad Pitt, and test audiences reportedly wanted to see her have a happier ending on screen.
Mel Gibson tested his religious film, The Passion Of The Christ, on Christian audiences, but he was reluctant to compromise on the bloodthirsty scenes of the crucifixion it portrayed.
However, after its initial cinema run, he cut six minutes to make it more palatable.
Terry Gilliam's dystopian masterpiece, Brazil, was mutilated by studio executives who particularly hated the bleak ending. The solution? They simply hacked off the final five minutes, ending the movie with Jonathan Pryce's "escape" which, in Gilliam's original, turned out to be a cruel illusion. Gilliam's battle to get his movie restored is recounted in The Battle Of Brazil by Jack Mathews.
In Ridley Scott's classic Bladerunner, the director intended revealing that Harrison Ford's character was a replicant, but the studio insisted that audiences wanted him to be flesh and blood.
The same director originally wanted to conclude Alien with the space monster biting the head off Sigourney Weaver, which would have nipped that franchise in the bud, but the studio wouldn't allow it.
In his classic guide to scriptwriting, Screenplay, Syd Field lays down the golden rule: "Know your ending". With DVDs offering out-takes as selling points, directors are increasingly ignoring Field's diktat in favour of shooting one or more alternative endings.
John Dahl filmed four different endings to his acclaimed thriller, Road Kill, one of which added 28 minutes to the running time. Too much of a good thing? In all probability, yes.
