The Butterfly Effect

Four endings were shot for the film J. Mackye Gruber made with Eric Bress, and the version released settles nothing. The script was written in 1998 under the title The Blackouts. The ending its directors wanted has Evan return to the moment of his birth and strangle himself with his own umbilical cord, ending the curse; that version survives in the director’s cut, and it was filmed with a two week old infant. New Line judged it too bleak for an audience. The studio’s own preference was a version where Evan and Kayleigh meet on the pavement and go for coffee, while preview audiences chose the one where the two recognise each other and keep walking. That is the one that reached cinemas. In the fourth, Evan turns and follows her. Ashton Kutcher also served as an executive producer, studied dissociative disorders for the part and prepared alongside John Patrick Amedori, who plays Evan at thirteen. Shooting took place in Vancouver. Across one hundred and thirteen minutes each intervention resets the cast. Nobody develops; everyone is rebuilt from scratch. A good fit if you enjoy the same people reintroduced in every timeline, restarting rather than growing. Not for you if you need the ending to settle the account, because the ending that does was shot and never released.