11 Times Major TV And Movie Productions Altered Their Plots To Save Some Cash

1.One of the most memorable scenes from the first season of Game of Thrones — and perhaps the show as a whole — came in the form of an emotionally layered conversation between Cersei and her husband, King Robert Baratheon. The dialogue conveyed their mutual disdain for each other and the ruinous state of their marriage, while also containing surprising moments of humor and understanding.

According to a Q&A with showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss published by Deadline in 2013, this scene and others like it came about because their episodes were running short and they had to add more scenes — about an hour and a half's worth throughout the season — without going over budget. Benioff explained, "Because we had no money left, these had to be inexpensive scenes, like two actors in a room. We certainly could not add any battle stuff."

But he said that the scenes created as a result of these limitations "ended up being some of our favorites of the season." He gave the Cersei and Robert scene as an example, and said that previously, the pair hadn't shared any screentime alone together, despite their status as an (extremely dysfunctional) married couple.

Benioff said, "The show would have been a lot weaker without that and other ‘Hail Mary’ scenes we threw at the time because we were out of money."

2.Between her legendary superhero name and her deadpan resistance to all of Deadpool's antics, Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) seems like a natural addition to the Deadpool franchise's cast, but according to a trailer breakdown director Tim Miller did for Empire in 2015, she was a last-minute substitution for another mutant whose powers required special effects beyond those the production could afford.

Miller explained, "We had Garrison Kane in there for a while, but in the final round of budget cuts we had to take him out, because he was a pretty expensive dude. He’s got these bionic arms that change shape; he would have been a visual effect for a large part of the movie. And as it turned out, a visual effect too far." In searching for a replacement on a "list of Marvel characters," Miller discovered Negasonic Teenage Warhead. He and the screenwriters, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, agreed that she was the right choice to take Garrison Kane's place.

And what with Deadpool's "take-a-sledgehammer-to-the-fourth-wall" approach to superhero moviemaking, it's only natural that Deadpool himself would reference the film's budget constraints.

3.Speaking of Deadpool, screenwriter Rhett Reese told io9 that right before they started filming, 20th Century Fox told them they needed to cut "$7-8 million out of the budget in a 48-hour window," which amounted to around nine pages of the script.

Their solution? Compress three characters — Sluggo, Wire, and the previously mentioned Garrison Kane — into one (Angel Dust, played by Gina Carano), cut a motorcycle chase between Deadpool and Ajax, and perhaps most famously of all, make Deadpool forget his big bag of guns in a taxi during the film's third act.

Reese reflected, "It was that last, lean, and mean chop that got us to a place where Fox was willing to make it. The script was very efficient and not too long. That was a function of budget more than anything, but I think it really made the movie pace nicely."

4.Back to the Future screenwriter Bob Gale told Collider that in the original version of the script, "The idea [was] that the DeLorean was nuclear powered, [and] literally they needed to harness nuclear energy to send the time machine back to the future." The finale took place in a model town built to test a nuclear bomb explosion, with Marty tucked inside a time traveling refrigerator, ready to absorb the energy of the blast.

But when the studio asked them to cut a million from the budget before they began filming, they decided they didn't need to build the ill-fated town, after all. Instead, they used a set on a backlot that was already available to them. Gale recalled, "Over a weekend, we spent time walking around on the backlot going back and forth to our offices, and we came up with the whole clock tower sequence." Apparently, a lightning strike is way cheaper than a mushroom cloud.

And if you recognize the whole survive-a-nuclear-explosion-in-a-fridge gambit, Gale says that's because Stephen Spielberg was "inspired by the original ending to Back to the Future" while making Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which begins with Indy pulling off the fridge trick in a nuclear test town.

5.In the same interview, Gale said that the opening of the movie, which reveals all the eccentric gadgetry of Doc Brown's lab, was another inexpensive substitution for a more elaborate, pricey sequence.

Gale recalled that originally, "We had this whole thing where Marty gets stuck in detention and he sets off the fire sprinklers in the classroom to get out of detention and escape to get to his audition, and we realized that that was an awful lot of shooting, an awful lot of logistics, and we didn’t need any of that." The set they needed wasn't completed, so they decided to ditch the idea and use a set that was ready to go: Doc Brown's lab.

Gale said, "Of course, it turned out to be way, way better than what we had in the script.”

6.In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry and his friends accidentally encounter Neville's parents while visiting Mr. Weasley in the magical hospital, St. Mungo's. They're horrified when informed by Neville's grandmother that his parents were tortured to the point of insanity by Voldemort's followers, leaving them permanently incapacitated. Though Harry already knows this story by the time he sees Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom, it's a heartbreaking moment, and one that fans were disappointed to see cut from the movie adaptation.

In a 2007 interview, screenwriter Michael Goldenberg told Salon that while the creative team wanted to keep the scene, they simply didn't have the money they needed to build a whole new set. Goldenberg said, "And whatever people think about Harry Potter films, there are not unlimited budgets, and we didn't really need it to tell the story, so it got cut. But it was something we all held on to until the very end, and I would have liked to see it." So while the story of Neville's parents was still included in the film, it was significantly altered: Neville told only Harry, and their conversation took place in the Room of Requirement, rather than the hospital.

7.According to an interview with Austin Powers director Jay Roach published by the Directors Guild of America Quarterly, one joke in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery came about because they had to substitute a more expensive version for what Myers apparently called "no-money fun."

In the movie, Dr. Evil has a temper tantrum when the sharks with lasers he requested are replaced with ill-tempered, mutant sea bass, apparently because the environmental protections placed on sharks are too much of a pain to navigate. Much like Dr. Evil, the creative team was hoping for laser sharks, but had to settle for the much more reasonably priced rubber sea bass.

However, they did manage to get those sharks by Austin Powers in Goldmember, the third film in the series. The results are...troubling.

8.One of the most recognizable jokes in Monty Python's illustrious history can be found in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where King Arthur's squire Patsy hits coconut shells together to replicate the sound of a horse's hoofbeats, without all the trouble of, you know, actual horses.

In an interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers, John Cleese said that budget restrictions was why "Michael Palin, bless him, came up with the idea of the coconuts." He went on, "Necessity is the mother of invention. Sometimes when you don't have much and you have to improvise, that's sometimes when the very best ideas come through."

9.Speaking of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the "broke equals best" rule: According to Variety, Michael Palin's private archive, which he donated to the British Library, revealed that the original ending of the film involved a battle between the English, the French, and the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.

But this proved to be too great an expense, so instead, the battle is cut short when King Arthur gets arrested by decidedly non-medieval British cops.

10.In Rocky, the titular up-and-coming boxer takes his love interest, Adrian, to an empty ice rink for a bit of after-hours skating.

According to the AFI Catalog entry for the movie, the closed rink was an economical solution to the cost of paying extras, many of whom would be needed in the original version of the scene. The resulting fix is cheaper, not to mention more romantic.

11.And finally: In a 2010 interview with the AV Club, screenwriter and star Leigh Whannell and director James Wan described how their 2004 horror hit Saw came about as a result of their mutual lack of funds following their graduation from film school.

Whannell said, "James and I didn’t even think of Saw until a few years after film school, because when we finished film school, we had that existential problem faced by all film-school graduates. Namely, poverty. So we were like, 'How are we going to make a film when we had all these big ideas? Big ideas cost money.'"

A film about two people trapped in a room together turned out to be just the right approach to their budgeting concerns. Wan said, "If we had made that film with a bigger studio with studio financing behind it, I think the film would have a very different feel and look to it. ... The film I ended up with was more gritty and rough around the edges, due to the lack of time and money that we had to shoot the movie with."