Bloopers That Actually Cost The Filmmakers A Ton Of Money
Movie bloopers are a lot of fun, plain and simple. It's charming to see movie stars blow their lines—messing up occasionally means that underneath all the fame, Hollywood big shots are just like the rest of us. Film fans love to watch actors flub, and with the way they make themselves and their co-stars laugh when it happens, actors clearly love them too.
Filmmakers, on the other hand, may not love bloopers quite as much. Every time an actor makes a mistake, it delays the shoot just a little, and time is money. And every so often, they're forced to deal with a truly world-class mess-up—a mistake that costs the production big money, sometimes due to property damage and personal injury. We've rounded up a collection of mistakes that rank among Hollywood's most expensive goofs. Here's a look at some bloopers that actually cost the filmmakers a ton of money.
Seven
Brad Pitt suffered a nasty injury on the set of Seven. He played a police detective, and during one scene that called for him to chase his suspect in the rain, he slipped and smashed his hand into a windshield, severing a tendon. Director David Fincher mentions on the film's DVD commentary that Pitt showed him his wound, which was so severe he could see the white of the bone.
Making the best of a bad situation, Fincher managed to incorporate Pitt's injury into the story of Seven by having the script rewritten to have Mills suffer an injury in the line of duty. It added time and expense to the production schedule, but it was probably cheaper to explain why one of the film's main characters was suddenly wearing a cast than it would have been to delay shooting long enough for Pitt to recover.
Still, it didn't solve the problem completely: like most movies, Seven was shot out of sequence, so any scene filmed after Pitt's injury required the actor to hold his bad hand in his pocket or behind his back.
Quantum of Solace
Daniel Craig's second James Bond film, 2008's Quantum of Solace, left the star with a couple of unwanted souvenirs from time on the set: injury and pain. While filming a fight scene, a stuntman went in for a kick close to Craig's face and accidentally landed the blow. Filming had to stop so Craig could seek out medical treatment, which included eight stitches for his wounds. He was also left with a black eye, which just isn't something a debonair super-spy is supposed to sport. In post-production, editors had to use digital effects technology to painstakingly remove the big circle of discoloration around Craig's eye.
Skyfall
According to writer and filmmaker Charlie Lyne, the 2012 Bond adventure Skyfall had to deal with some unplanned expenses because star Daniel Craig wore a pair of leather gloves at the wrong moment.
As Lyne told the story, Craig asked director Sam Mendes if he could wear the gloves in a particular scene; Mendes agreed, and the cast and crew got down to work filming a sequence in which a bad guy gets Bond's gun away from him, only to find he can't fire it because it has a fingerprint scanner—it will only work for Bond. Months later in the editing bay, a production assistant noticed a problem: how would Bond himself have used his fingerprint-activated gun while wearing gloves? After considering the costs of a reshoot, the filmmakers decided it would be cheaper (although still quite expensive) to digitally remove the gloves from Craig's hands for the entire sequence.
Other close Skyfall watchers argue that while Lyne's story is true, he got the scene in question wrong. There's another sequence in the film where Bond uses a naked hand to test his gun's fingerprint scanner in a car, then rides up an elevator, still gloveless. When he spots an assassin, 007 hides his gun and continues the scene wearing gloves. Some careful glove removal just may have gone down here. Adding credence to this theory: According to Slashfilm, an early Skyfall promotional photo of this scene shows Craig wearing gloves. In the movie, the gloves are gone.
The Hateful Eight
To play crafty outlaw Daisy Domergue in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, Jennifer Jason Leigh had to learn how to play the guitar. The lucky actress got to learn on the same one she'd strum in the film: a vintage Martin guitar dating to the 19th century, loaned to the movie by the Martin Guitar Museum.
Leigh's big guitar-playing moment on screen was all planned out: while she was playing, co-star Kurt Russell was supposed to grab it. The scene would cut and the Martin would be traded out for a cheaper prop guitar, which Russell would smash when the cameras started to roll again. But that isn't what happened—instead, Russell grabbed the Martin from Leigh and smashed it, all in one fell swoop. That take was used in the final cut of the movie, and Leigh's horrified cries of "Whoa!" are real. Russell, Leigh later told Billboard, "felt terrible" because he genuinely didn't realize in the moment that he'd just destroyed a $40,000 guitar.
Justice League
Sometimes it's not the actor who goofs up, it's the studio responsible for the movie—and then they have to fork out the cash to make things right. Warner Bros. had to reassemble the cast of Justice in the summer of 2017 for some crucial reshoots. Henry Cavill, a.k.a. Superman, was among those summoned, but there was a problem: He'd grown a mustache for his next role, in the sixth Mission: Impossible movie, and was contractually obliged to keep it until M:I was finished filming.
The facial hair scheduling snafu left Justice League's visual effects technicians responsible for digitally removing Superman's mustache. An effects expert told Business Insider it could cost millions: "You typically have to 3D motion track a new face patch on the actor to remove the 'stache and all its shadows. This involves matching both their head/body position and facial expressions. It must sync with all their dialog. Then you have to light that face patch and composite it in and make it look seamless."
Proud Mary
In the 2018 movie Proud Mary, Taraji P. Henson plays a hit woman with connections to organized crime—and a very nice sports car. Henson did her own stunt driving for the film, and successfully nailed four takes of a scene involving a stunt behind the wheel of her character's Maserati. The director just had to get one more take—which was when Henson turned the wheel too aggressively and rammed into a fire hydrant. Fortunately, Henson wasn't injured. Unfortunately, the Maserati was: Henson's mistake left some massive dents on the right side of the car. Cost of the damages, according to TMZ: about $12,000.
The Avengers
Marvel's superhero team isn't the only Avengers in pop culture. There's also The Avengers, a 1960s British spy TV series. The 1998 film adaptation starring Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman was a critical and commercial bomb, but the movie made headlines for another type of detonation. While the crew filmed an explosion for the movie, a few rogue sparks drifted away and hit the roof of the studio, starting a fire that was definitely not part of the plan. A set worth a reported £1 million (about $1.6 million) was destroyed.
Battlestar Galactica
The cheesy '70s sci-fi show Battlestar Galactica was completely reinvented in the 21st century as a serious drama with very high production values. The 2007 episode "Malestrom" shows off the production's commitment to quality with a sequence in which Admiral Adama (Edward James Olmos) works on a beautiful model ship; overcome with rage and grief, he destroys the model. It was a completely improvised moment—otherwise, Olmos probably wouldn't have torn the ship apart. As he told an audience at the 2012 Planet Comicon, Olmos had no idea that the model was a museum-quality piece on loan to the production—or that it was worth around $200,000.