From the controversial Director’s Cut of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ which delivers a ‘War of the Worlds’ type conclusion where Audrey II consumes Seymour, Audrey, Cleveland, and the world (with help from an army of interstellar Venus fly traps). The ending got switched after Frank Oz went to the first test screening in San Jose. The audience was on-board for the whole thing … laughing and clapping after each musical number. Until the end. Seeing both leads swallowed, along with the rest of the world didn’t go over well. The theater went from warm and cheery to ice-cold, with tallied-up reaction cards delivering a 13% recommendation for widespread release. Studio productions that miss 55% are usually withheld. Oz really liked his original ending (like most directors) so he wasn’t eager to change it. He ran a second test screening with a different audience and … same reaction.

Opinions vary as to why. Here are some of them. The OG ending tacks on roughly 15 mins of footage that includes $5M worth of miniatures, puppets, and vfx. It looks amazing but: 1) is ultimately unnecessary; 2) causes pacing problems; 3) treats Seymour & Audrey like afterthoughts while focusing on a bunch of strangers getting creamed by a villain that’s already won; 3) is a bummer; 4) plays differently than the stage version where plant-effects are laughably fake, additional elements (in terms of story & presentation) establish a comic/absurd tone and make Seymour more deserving of comeuppance, and the leads come out after their deaths to take bows (undercutting the tragedy of their deaths).

Oz didn’t want his masterpiece to wither on the wine and Warners didn’t want their investment dollars to burn. So the workprint was dismantled and reworked to include a new happy ending. Subsequent test screenings delivered well over 50%.

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Plant design, animatronics, fabrication by Lyle Conway and his team. Model work supervised by Richard Conway. VFX supervised by Bran Ferren.

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