In every love triangle romantic comedy, there’s always one person left standing alone while the other two head off to start their lives together. And sometimes, that last person standing is one that some of the audience may have been rooting for to win true love at the end of the film.
But for the upcoming romantic comedy This Means War, director McG briefly entertained the idea of having his cake and eating too when it comes to the film’s ending.
In the film, which opens February 17, features Chris Pine and Tom Hard as best friends and CIA agents who discover that they are dating the same girl, Reese Witherspoon. Of course, once they tumble to this fact they soon grow super competitive for her affections. And as to who wins that contest at the end of the film , well, McG had entertained the idea of having them both win the girl. During an interview while promoting the film the director revealed that he considered shooting two endings to the film and releasing both of them into theaters.
We wanted to have flexibility and even talked about two endings and releasing it on 3,000 screens — 1,500 have this [ending] and 1,500 have that one, and just not saying anything… But it felt a little gimmicky in the end.
Gimmicky, perhaps, but a lot less so than films being released in 3D for no apparently good reason other than to charge a little bit extra at the box office. If anything, it would have added an extra interesting aspect to the film and keep the audience guessing a little harder than usual. And if the audience liked the movie enough to want to find out how the other ending played than there would have been extra ticket sales.
The idea is a riff off of the multiple endings for the theatrical release of the 1985 of the mystery comedy Clue. In keeping with the board game origins of the film, three different endings were scripted, shot and attached to different prints. It was enough to send people to different theaters to see the different endings.
Via Movieline.
