Movies - TV
The Original Banshees Of Inisherin Ending Included A Bloody Shootout
By LYVIE SCOTT
“The Banshees of Inisherin” is a tragic comedy about mortality, mental health, communication, legacy, and so much more. Underneath all those layers, and all that existentialism, is one very brutal break-up, and actor Colin Farrell revealed that a key plot point in writer-director Martin McDonagh's initial story for Colm and Pádriac’s journey didn’t survive the script’s evolution.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Farrell shared that when McDonagh sent an early draft of the script to him seven years ago, that iteration of the story had a much different ending. Farrell said, “He emailed me and Brendan, ‘Hey fellas, here's this script I was working on. Have a look.’ [...] There was a big shoot-out, and at the end, I died bleeding out with a gun in my hand.”
Four years later, McDonagh returned with a rewrite. “We get another email: ‘Hey lads, I threw everything out except for the first five pages.’ It was the script that we ended up shooting last summer,” said Farrell. It was much “richer” than that first script, as Farrell concluded, “[McDonagh made] it this kind of existential journey, he just allowed himself to go deeper [...] into the human condition.”