Typically , a screenplay is the backbone or design for a movie — but occasionally , a moving picture will go into principal photography without a finished handwriting , with author frantically trying to finish scene for a quick and contaminating output . Sometimes , it works , and sometimes … it does n’t .
1.Sunset Boulevard
Billy Wilder ’s Academy Award - winning picture show noirSunset Boulevardwent into production withthe script unfinished . This was part due to poor production planning , but also Wilder and his co - manufacturer / co - screenwriter Charles Brackett ’s architectural plan to get the film made without vex objections from censors and studio apartment administrator . Wilder and Brackettused the working titleA Can of Beansand submitted pages to censors and executives piecemeal during production to disguise its misanthropic and scathing expression at the studio system .
After a trailer riddle ofSunset Boulevard , MGM executive director Louis B. MayertoldWilder , " You have disgrace the industry that made and feed in you ! You should be tarred and feather and pass out of Hollywood ! "
2.Lawrence of Arabia
David Lean ’s masterpieceLawrence of Arabiaborelittle resemblanceto its original hand , compose by screenwriter Michael Wilson . Lean brought on British playwright Robert Bolt to re - focus the film on T.E. Lawrence , played by Peter O’Toole , instead of its to a fault political point - of - view with the Arab Revolt . The late re - write did n’t stop the output ; Lean take up shooting without a finished script . To further complicate the product , Bolt was nail due to his involution in an anti - nuclear weapon demonstration , which hampered the screenplay ’s completion .
3.Iron Man
According to wizard Jeff Bridges , Iron Man — the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — went into yield with just an synopsis when the studio apartment rushed production in March 2007 to make the film ’s May 2008 release date . " They had no handwriting , military personnel . They had an outline , " the actor , who encounter Obadiah Stane ( a.k.a . smoothing iron Monger)told io9 . " We would show up for handsome scenes every 24-hour interval and we would n’t know what we were going to say . We would have to go into our dawdler and workplace on this scene and call up writers on the headphone , ' You got any ideas ? ' Meanwhile the crew is tap their foot on the stage wait for us to come on . You would think with a $ 200 million picture you ’d have the sh*t together , but it was just the opposite word . And the reason for that is because they get ahead of themselves . They have a release day of the month before the script . "
4.Edge of Tomorrow
The science fiction filmEdge of Tomorrowbegan production in 2012 with just a bumpy schema of its activity and storey , which was establish on a Nipponese best - selling novel entitledAll You Need Is Kill . However , concord to manufacturer Erwin Stoff , Doug Liman ’s management made it potential to weigh forward without a screenplay .
" It emphatically is not the most unagitated - induce experience to be facing the start engagement without a script . You have to have a cast - iron stomach,“Stoff narrate theLos Angeles Times . " What made me charter Doug is , he has an ability to take a tried and true genre and find something completely new in it , push the familiar genre elements to the back and use the music genre to research something brand novel and completely original . "
5.Casablanca
Most picture show shootout of orderfor budgeting and logistic rationality . However , whenCasablancastarted shooting on May 25 , 1942 , its scene were shoot in sequential order because only the first half of the playscript was ready for production . Instead , its writers completed the screenplay during production , while they hadCasablanca ’s generator textile — a microscope stage play titled " Everybody Comes to Rick’s”—as an outline and guide . Throughout its entire shooting schedule , Casablancawent through four dissimilar screenwriters to re - indite and cease its screenplay .
6.Topaz
7.Alien 3
Due to the Writers Guild of America strike in 1987 , development onAlien 3was put on hold until the strike was resolve . Once Hollywood writer were able to go back to work , a two - film treatment forAlien 3andAlien 4was trash — but not before mark designers start building expensive set and models based on concept art for the two films . A storey had to fit around what was built and hold off at Pinewood Studios in England , and Twentieth Century Fox had already announced a liberation date of 1992 , before a director or script were finalize . The output went through two directors — Renny Harlin and Vincent Ward — before landing on David Fincher for his directorial debut .
With $ 7 million sunk into develop the tarradiddle and pre - production , Alien 3started shooting without a finished screenplay in 1991 . Fincher did n’t have enough time to fix the moving-picture show for a proper output and was struggling with re - write the script and re - shooting scenes , studio interference , and a hover release engagement . After production was complete , Fincher leave the project before the movie was assembled in editing .
“ We have had to make a portion of changes in the script as we ’ve gone along,”star Sigourney Weaver toldEmpire powder store . “ We were building the sets before we had a script and having to redact it chop-chop , because of time concern . That was not the way that Fincher wanted to do his first celluloid . "
8.Jaws
While the blockbusterJawsis now seen as a milestone in cinematic history and Steven Spielberg ’s life history , its yield wasplaguedby legion difficulties — filming in the assailable water or else of a tank on a studio apartment stage at Spielberg ’s insistency , mechanically skillful job with the shark , and the deficiency of a finish script while shooting . As a result , the production take more than 100 days to discharge with a budget that ballooned to three time its initial cost . " We commence the moving picture without a script , without a cast of characters and without a shark , " said Richard Dreyfuss of his experience makingJaws . Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb was brought on to finish and re - spell the script during master picture taking in 1974 .
