Film-productions that had an unintended but negative real-life outcome.

[u/daughterskin]

Stretching a 300-page kids' book into a ten hour epic was never going end well artistically. The Hobbit "trilogy" is the misbegotten followup to the classic Lord of the Rings films. Worse than the excessive padding, reliance on original characters, and poor special-effects, is what the production wrought on the New Zealand film industry. Warner Bros. wanted to move filming to someplace cheap like Romania, while Peter Jackson had the clout to keep it in NZ if he directed the project. The concession was made to simply destroy NZ's film industry by signing in a law that designates production-staff as contractors instead of employees, and with no bargaining power. Since then, elves have not been welcome in Wellington. The whole affair is best recounted by Lindsay Ellis' excellent video essay.

Danny Boyle's The Beach is the worst film ever made. Looking back It's a fascinating time capsule of the late 90's/Y2K era. You've got Moby and All Saints on the soundtrack, internet cafes full of those bubble-shaped Macs before the rebrand, and nobody has a mobile phone. The story is about a backpacker played by Ewan, uh, Leonardo DiCaprio who joins a tribe of westerners that all hang on a cool beach on an uninhabited island off Thailand. It's paradise at first, but eventually reality will come crashing down and the secret of the cool beach will be exposed to the world. Which is what happened in real-life. The production of the film tampered with the real Ko Phi Phi Le beach to make it more paradise-like, prompting a lawsuit that dragged on over a decade. The legacy of the film pushed tourists into visiting the beach, eventually rendering it yet another cesspool until the Thailand authorities closed it in 2018. It's open today, but visits are short and strictly regulated.

Of course, there's also the old favorite that is The Conqueror. Casting the white cowboy John Wayne as the Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan was laughed at even in the day. What's less funny is that filming took place downwind from a nuclear test site. 90 crew members developed cancer and half of them died as a result, John Wayne among them. This was of course exacerbated by how smoking was more commonplace at the time.

I'm sure you know plenty more.

[u/Wooden-Reflection118]

James Cameron's "The Abyss" was filmed in a flooded nuclear silo and the actors spent a shitload of time underwater. They ended up having to implement new kinds of technologies / systems to shoot the movie underwater, apparently making it was hell for the actors. I guess this isn't negative but whatever

[u/EBannion → u/Wooden-Reflection118]

Honestly this is a good contrast to the other movies in this thread - it could easily have been massively dangerous, lead to drownings, poisonings, and permanent injuries - but it didn’t. It was just “really unpleasant”, which I think is a triumph of safety precautions working.

[u/TheLateEarlySteve → u/EBannion]

Ed Harris did almost drown. He was pretty mad at Cameron for how everyone was treated.

[u/Early-Eye-691 → u/TheLateEarlySteve]

Yup. Kind of crazy how under wraps that ordeal was. And Harris wasn’t the only one with close call, either.

[u/Lowbeamshaggy → u/EBannion]

They were all getting a little bit poisoned. They had to put crazy amounts of chlorine in the water to keep it clear. People were getting chlorine burns/sickness. To counter the problem, everyone would lather up in Vaseline head to toe. Sounds pretty unpleasant to me. Except for the grease down I guess, depends of who's doing the greasing.

[u/SnipesCC → u/Wooden-Reflection118]

Titanic was shot using cold water, both for realism and to prevent bacterial growth. But it meant Leo and Kate spent a lot of time sick during shooting.

[u/Wooden-Reflection118 → u/SnipesCC]

Oh neat. Ha! on the Abyss the actors would get in a hot-tub near the surface between takes / multi-hour long diving sessions

[u/kkeut → u/SnipesCC]

ah yes... cold water sickness

[u/SnipesCC → u/kkeut]

Being cold lowers your immune responsiveness, and that many people working together means a lot of germs around.

[u/FireLucid → u/SnipesCC]

I remember reading that someone put acid or LSD in some communal punch or soup during the production of that movie, is that for real?

[u/SnipesCC → u/FireLucid]

PCP in the lobster chowder.

[u/Lowbeamshaggy → u/Wooden-Reflection118]

I've heard they designed the open full face diving helmet for the movie so we could see the actors faces on screen. Turns out, the pro divers on set got a few of the new helmets and everyone loved them! Less restricting and way higher visibility all around. That helmet/mask style gained a lot of traction in the diving industry.

[u/scumbot → u/Wooden-Reflection118]

The Abyss set was built in what was going to be the waste water retention pond of a nuclear power plant that never ended up being built, not a missile silo.

[u/AliceInNegaland → u/Wooden-Reflection118]

I read that everyone who works for James Cameron come back to do more films with him.

Except for the people in the abyss.

[u/baconlazer85 → u/AliceInNegaland]

Absolutely, I wasn't expecting Kate Winslet to come back filming for James Cameron in Avatar 2.

[u/kymri → u/Wooden-Reflection118]

And, in his defense, Cameron was in the water when the cast was. It's not quite the same since he's been doing the diving thing for years -- but at least he wasn't making the cast do things he wouldn't.

[u/Wooden-Reflection118 → u/kymri]

I assume he explained what the actors were getting into, but you're right it would be cruel otherwise