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    Phone Booth (2002), which took place entirely inside a phone booth, was almost directed by Michael Bay, until the first question he asked after reading the script was “OK, how do we get this thing out of the damn telephone booth?” What are some other movies that almost ended up entirely different?


    Source for the title: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-mar-30-ca-cohen30-story.html

    Will Smith was now excited about starring, though, and red-hot Michael Bay wanted to direct.

    Michael’s first words upon meeting me were, “OK, how do we get this thing out of the damn telephone booth?”

    My Fox executives went into shock. Within days, Michael Bay was out and the Hughes brothers had been brought aboard to direct.

    by NewsCards

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    16 Comments

    1. YessikaHaircutt on

      I can’t remember the full story, but I remember hearing a podcast with the writer of what eventually became Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights about how shocked he was that the movie changed so much by the time it made it to the screen

      edit: ok it was Peter Sagal from NPR and he originally wrote it as a story of a woman who met a Cuban missionary and fell in love. It was described as a serious political romance.

    3. Fritzkreig on

      Michael Bay was not right for Phone Booth; he would have had way more explosions!

    5. Fake_Mustache_Rudy on

      Steven Spielberg beat James Cameron for the rights to Jurassic Park by like a few minutes or a few hours or something.

    6. hung_like_an_ant on

      I wouldn’t really describe the movie as taking place “entirely in a phone booth”

    7. bongo1100 on

      Sylvester Stallone was the first choice for Beverly Hills Cop, but wanted to make it less comedic and more action-packed. They instead went with Eddie Murphy, and Stallone turned his vision into the movie Cobra.

    8. Personal_Comb_6745 on

      “What do you mean the phone booth doesn’t explode?!” – Michael Bay as he slams the phone down (which also explodes)

    9. ws_luk on

      Zack Snyder’s REBEL MOON was initially pitched to Lucasfilm as a STAR WARS movie: I’m guessing that the character who uses a pair of molten metal swords was at one point meant to be carrying lightsabers.

    10. CdnfaS on

      Fight Club was meant to be a satire about fragile masculinity, but the audience just kind of went “Yeah!”

    12. garrisontweed on

      In the original script. Riggs was suppose to die at the end of Lethal Weapon 2.

    14. walla_walla_rhubarb on

      Jaws was originally going to be directed by Dick Richards, but in a meeting with producers he kept referring to the shark as a whale.

    15. Impossible_Key_7291 on

      Gremlins was originally much darker. Billy’s mother I believe was going to get killed and Gizmo was going to eat after midnight and end up being the bad guy.

    16. Character_Pudding_94 on

      I was watching Phone Booth when my roommate came in and said he was bitten by a spider or something, and his airway was closing up, and could 8 take him to the hospital? I said, “Aw, man, I just started a movie!” He asked which one; I told him. He said, “Motherfucker, I’ll tell you how it ends.”

      “Oh, I’ve seen it before.”

      Miraculously, he did not kill me that night.

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