THIS IS THE END Original Ending Revealed
If you haven't seen This is the End yet, you should check it out. It's a pretty damn funny film. If you have seen it, and you want to know what they originally had planned for the end of the movie, then read on.
The movie was full of a ton of great cameos, but one cameo they couldn't get was Morgan Freeman. In a interview with Vulture co-writer and co-director Evan Goldberg revealed that Freeman was included in the original ending of the movie, but they had to change it because he rejected them.
The whole joke was, he shows up, and he's like, 'I'm God. And they're like, 'You're God?' And Jay [Baruchel] goes, 'Wait, so when we were in Million Dollar Baby together, were you God then? I don't get it.' And then God shows up and he's like, 'We're just fucking with you. This is Morgan Freeman. We just play this joke on people when they come to heaven now. Do you guys want to get high and play some video games?
Freeman obviously didn't find it funny, so they went to plan B... The Backstreet Boys. Here's the story of how that all came about.
We were trying to figure out a way to spruce up the end, to make it better. It actually was an off-handed suggestion of our wives, and then Seth [Rogen] just kept bringing it up, and then it kind of snowballed into something that we didn't think could happen, and it did.
It was probably the best day I've ever had. It was like a childhood dream come true. Fucking Backstreet Boys, come on! I'm the appropriate age where Backstreet Boys were kings and 'NSYNC were a bunch of goddamned copycats.
Rogen, who is a huge fan of the Backstreet Boys, went on to say, "The Backstreet Boys were like, 'Yeah! Of course we would be in heaven, Why wouldn't we be?' We bring joy to the world.'" In a separate interview with /Film Jay Baruchel had this to say about it,
Well, Seth’s five days younger then me — and by the way, the Backstreet Boys broke in Canada. They had a number one single in Canada the year before the record came out in the States, so it was kind of a test market for the Backstreet Boys. We grew up watching them and have such a personal fan-to-musician relationship with them. So when it first came about was the scene towards the beginning of the movie where I am at Seth’s house playing video games and smoking weed and leg wrestling and all this stuff. Adding “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” during that just felt right. There’s a degree of nostalgia to it.
So when it came time to do the Heaven sequence, we all kind of addressed the elephant in the room and was like clearly they should be there. And Evan Goldberg said my reaction was how he knew that they were on to something because he said “Jay you are the guy I know who doesn’t like The Beatles, but when I told you we could get the Backstreet Boys, you said ‘Are you fucking serious?!’”
Know that our tongues are nowhere near our cheeks at all. It was such a huge honor to get to work with them and have them there. It was just one of these things, people see us with them and it’s just pure happiness. And whatever way you intellectually rationalize it, it’s just a wonderfully fun, happy way to end the movie with incredibly talented singers and dancers alongside our idiot characters.
What do you think of the original ending for the film, and the one they ended up with?