Movies - TV
Darabont Edited a Few Alternate Endings For The Mist — And None of Them Worked
By JOSHUA MEYER
"The Mist" famously ends with a despondent David Drayton unloading four bullets on the four passengers in his car, including his own son Billy, just when it seems all hope is lost and a suicide pact is their last resort for escaping the Lovecraftian monsters in the mist. The gut-punching ending left viewers polarized, but director Frank Darabont was happy with it.
For Darabont and producer Denise M. Huth, it was the whole reason for making the movie and it was the ending Darabont wanted to deliver. Huth said, "I remember Frank and [editor] Hunter [Via] cut a few different things just to see how they would play, whether it's like the novella, [where] they just drive off into the mist and we don't know what happens."
Huth continued, "There was one that I swear to God was even worse. It was, you ended on Billy [Drayton, played by Nathan Gamble] waking up and saying 'Daddy?' and then it cuts to black and you hear a gunshot. And it was so awful. It was just so much worse. They did try a few different variations, but what we had worked best."