A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : THAT’S ALL, FOLKS : Endings We All Can Agree On

Since the earliest days of movies, filmmakers have agreed if the ending doesn’t work, that usually spells trouble. Many a screenwriter has lived by the adage, “Don’t begin your story until you’ve got an ending.”

But this summer, the brains behind “Alien 3” “Patriot Games,” “Boomerang” and “Single White Female,” among others, found that they may have had an ending, but it wasn’t the right one. So they went back before the cameras to film new ones or make changes.

“Movies today, more than ever, live or die on the Friday night they open,” says Roger Birnbaum, president of worldwide production at 20th Century Fox, the studio behind “Alien 3.” “You need to go out with your best foot forward. If that means making some changes, then that’s all right.”

Birnbaum thinks the industry looks at re-shooting an ending differently than it used to. “When I first started in this business as a producer, if you heard that someone was re-shooting an ending, that automatically meant the film was in terrible trouble,’ he says. “Now, it just means that the studio decided to spend some extra money to make a better film. There’s nothing shameful about doing some more work on a film, if it’s going to help it.”

Birnbaum says it was the decision of top studio executives and director David Fincher to re-shoot the ending of “Alien 3.” Of course, bearing in mind that the film has been somewhat of a disappointment at the box office, it’s anybody’s guess as to whether it was worth the time and expense. Still, Birnbaum says, “it was a decision we felt right about doing at the time.”

A marketing executive at a rival studio says that the studio’s current reliance on test screening films has contributed to the increase of changing a film’s ending. “Everybody in research will tell you that if a movie has a good ending, it helps a lot,” he says. “The technology has given us the opportunity to test-screen films way before they are released. And with market research being what it is now, we can put together a target audience and show it several months before the film goes out to theaters. As a result of that, we can get a better sense of whether or not the film, particularly the ending, works.”

As for “Boomerang,” according to producer Brian Grazer, the Eddie Murphy character wasn’t as involved in the film’s climax as the filmmakers wanted. “It wasn’t all that substantial, but we just wanted him more involved,” he says. He admits that the “testing has become much more important,” but insists the filmmakers had considered changing the “Boomerang” ending prior to Paramount’s test screenings. “The testing,” he says, “just ratified it a little more.”

Another film with an altered ending is Columbia’s “Single White Female,” which opens Aug. 14. According to the film’s director, Barbet Schroeder, the ending was originally going to be re-shot because of a technical problem, but he later decided to add some changes to the ending. “After the studio said I could go ahead and re-shoot, I decided that with the extra money I could do better,” he admits. “I ended up adding another beat to the climax, which just made it more exciting.”

Schroeder feels the practice of re-shooting isn’t anything new. He points to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 “Apocalypse Now,” which had several different endings when it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and where it ultimately received the festival’s Palme d’Or. Probably the most famous recent example of an ending altered after testing it is “Fatal Attraction.” The subsequent ending allowed Michael Douglas and Anne Archer’s characters to triumph over Glenn Close’s.

Schroeder also says he tested different endings with his own “Reversal of Fortune” when he screened it at the Telluride Film Festival in 1990. “This is a phenomenon that has existed for a long time,” he says, “but studios are more accustomed to it now because they are doing less movies a year and you can afford it.”

The cost of re-shooting a movie’s ending can vary dramatically. “It depends on what kind of movie you’re shooting,” says a producer. “If you’re shooting a small movie with interiors and it’s easy to get the actors, then it’s not too bad. ‘Alien 3,’ that’s going to be expensive.” Schroeder, who spent two days re-shooting the ending for “Single White Female,” says the cost was about $60,000 a day.

Currently, Universal has two upcoming films that have had their endings changed. The studio announced after the Los Angeles riots that one of the two, “Looters,” an urban action-drama, will also get a new name. The film, which was directed by Walter Hill (“48 HRS.”), reportedly went back before the cameras after a negative test screening in Los Angeles. Sources say that the largely black recruited audience didn’t like the fact that in that version of the ending, characters played by rappers Ice-T and Ice Cube were killed. Although the film was originally scheduled for a July release, the studio has not announced a new release date.

“Death Becomes Her,” a black comedy that stars Bruce Willis, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn, also has undergone changes to its ending prior to its July 31 release.

Of course, changing a film’s ending isn’t always a guarantee of success. For every “Patriot Games” or “Fatal Attraction,” both hits, there’s a “Radio Flyer,” which went through 13 different combinations of beginnings and endings . . . and still crashed at the box office.