The Original Script For MARS ATTACKS! Was a Lot Darker and The Screenwriter Was Fired Over Cows on Fire

We recently shared a bit of fun information on how Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! movie was originally envisioned as Dinosaurs Attack!. Topps originally had trading cards for Mars Attacks! and Dinosaurs Attacks! and Burton, along with screenwriter Jonathan Gems initially thought a movie about dinosaurs attacking cities was a great idea, and it was! That movie would have been hilarious and awesome! But, after Steven Spielberg started work on his Jurassic Park sequel, they decided to shift their focus to Mars Attacks!

So, Gems got to work on the script! He and Burton were looking to create a completely insane movie that would match the chaos of the images on trading cards that the movie was based on. Some things were just too much for the studio, though, during the development process. Gems wrote an opening scene that involved a herd of cows running down a road on fire. This scene actually made it into the film, but Gems was actually fired over it! During an interview with Inverse, Gems explained what happened:

“I got in trouble with the studio because they would ask me to do changes, and sometimes I wouldn’t do them. They told me you can’t have burning cows at the beginning of the film. I thought it was a good opening. Every time I did a new draft, they’d say, ‘The cows are still in. We can’t have burning cows.’ I said, ‘It’s not real cows that are burning.’ But they said, ‘No, you cannot do that – animal cruelty.’ I think it was the 11th draft, they said, ‘If the burning cows are in the next draft, you will be fired.’ So I did try but I couldn’t think of anything better, so I did deliver the new script with the burning cows. And they fired me.”

Burton talked about that scene, saying: “That’s one of the cards. That’s a good image, burning cows. It’s always funny when studios fight to kick stuff out. That is basically why you’re doing it.” It’s so crazy that they fired him over that, especially since the scene did end up in the movie. I guess Burton kept fighting for it, and he won!

After Gems was fired, the studio hired Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, who had previously written Ed Wood for Burton. When they came in to take a crack at the script, Alexander explained that the script that Gems worked on was a lot darker than what the movie ended up being. The new writers obviously lightened it up a bit. Alexander explained what made it darker:

“The script had a lot of cool ideas in it, but it was impossible to follow the stories. Jonathan’s script had an index at the back, which to this day I’ve never seen on any other script. The original draft was also a lot darker than the movie. Some of the characters were crackheads. A lot of the female characters were strippers and drug addicts. And we were getting the sense that if the other studio across town is making Independence Day, which is going to be Roland Emmerich and kind of serious, then the Tim/Warner Brothers version should just be kind of fun.

Karaszewski went on to reveal that their biggest contribution to the film “by far is ‘Ack ack ack.’” Which is how the Martians communicated. I always thought that was hilarious! Alexander went on to explain, “Jonathan’s script was primarily written as prose. And as we were doing it, we sort of realized that if you put the Martians’ ‘Ack ack ack’ into dialogue, you could actually have rhythm to it.”

Karaszewski and Alexander had to work hard and fast because Burton was “just scrambling to keep the movie alive.” There was so much pressure on the writers that their final draft is actually dated July 4, ’95. “We were in the office on the evening of July 4 with fireworks going off.”

But, they delivered the script and Burton was off to the races!