GREEN LANTERN Director Martin Campbell Says He Had a "Terrific Ending" But WB Kept Cutting The Budget
Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern was kind of a mess and for the most part, it left fans and audiences disappointed and unsatisfied. Well, the main reason behind the film’s failure was the studio and its bean counters. According to director Martin Campbell, the studio just kept cutting the budget. He also says that he had a terrific ending for the movie, but the studio wouldn’t let him do it because they were hell-bent on keeping the budget down.
During a recent interview with Collider, the filmmaker explained, "The problem was I remember in the last six to eight weeks of pre-production, every day – and I mean every day, we had meetings about cutting the budget. We need to cut the budget. How are we going to cut the budget.' Every goddamn day." He went on to talk about his ending, saying:
"And I'd worked out a terrific ending for that movie. I remember I had this quite big office down in New Orleans, the production offices, and I plastered the walls with storyboards. It was like wallpaper everywhere for the ending of the movie, and they came in and said, 'We can't afford it. You have to cut it all.' So in the end they came up with that crap ending. However, having said that, I never should have done it, but I did it. I don't think I did a good job, so for me, for superhero movies, there are better people than me who ought to be doing those movies."
He went on to say, "Superhero movies are not my cup of tea, and for that reason, I shouldn't have done it." As for his original ending, Campbell explained:
"To be honest, there was a battle in the streets between the four lanterns – between our heroes, Kilowog, Sinestro, and obviously Ryan Reynolds, and blah-blah – taking on a huge kind of monster that was taking over the city, and it was really The Magnificent Seven in a way, or The Magnificent Four. However, it did not come to pass, so there we are."
It’s a shame that things went down the way they did. Had Campbell actually been able to make his vision of the movie, who knows, it might have actually been good! That ending sounds a lot better than what we got! The studio just had too much of a hand in the development of the movie though.