The process of making and releasing a studio movie is hugely complicated, with the end product typically having passed through the hands of innumerable executives, producers, and so on before it’s finally sent out into the world.
But perhaps the single most agonising part of the marathon that is making a movie? Dealing with test audiences.
Test audiences are relied upon by studios to gauge how well a film will perform with Joe Public, and in turn allow said studio to predict how well the movie will do at the box office.
Test screenings certainly aren’t universally loathed by filmmakers, because they can provide genuine constructive feedback about what is and isn’t working, but they also often result in films having their most challenging content whittled away before release.
There are countless stories of dreadful movies being put through the test screening mangle, but what about those genuinely great films which nevertheless bombed when they were first shown to the general public?
That’s ultimately what happened with this lot, each of them unassailable classics of their respective genres, and yet, every single one of them got torn apart when they were first screened – for better or worse…
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy may be one of the most beloved comedies of the last 20 years, but its journey to the big screen was fraught to say the least.
Its first test screening was nothing short of disastrous, with Will Ferrell recently confirming that Anchorman initially scored a terrible 50/100, with many audience members disliking the original finale in which Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) is abducted by a vigilante group.
Ferrell said that this subplot “lost the audience,” and so the studio subsequently allowed director Adam McKay to shoot a new finale which revolved around a panda giving birth at San Diego Zoo.
This new plot was filmed in just five days and basically ended up saving the movie from commercial oblivion, as Anchorman went on to gross over $90 million worldwide.
However, the original subplot was ultimately included in the counterpart film Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie, which was released on DVD the very same year and was comprised of both deleted scenes and outtakes from the original shoot.Â