The famously gruesome ending of ‘Seven’ almost didn’t make it in the movie

New Line Cinema

“Seven.”

The ending of David Fincher’s 1995 classic psychological thriller “Seven” is one of the greats, with John Doe (Kevin Spacey) delivering the head of Detective Mills’ (Brad Pitt) wife in a box.

But if everything had gone as planned, that ending would never have seen the light of day.

The screenwriter of “Seven,” Andrew Kevin Walker, recently told the Hollywood Reporter that it was a mix-up in the draft Fincher got when being offered the movie that led to the movie being made with Walker’s original ending.

Before Fincher, the script, which Walker wrote on spec while working at Tower Records in New York City in the early 1990s, was optioned by “Christmas Vacation” director Jeremiah Chechik. And Chechik wanted the ending changed.

Walker doesn’t go into detail on what he changed the ending to, but there was definitely no head in a box.

Chechik moved on from the project and the script kicked around Hollywood until it got to Fincher, but it was the original version with the head-in-a-box ending that was given to him.

“[Fincher] expressed some interest, but in expressing his interest to them, had mentioned there was a head in the box,” Walker told THR. “And they were like, ‘Oh, no, no, no. We sent you the wrong draft.’ And then they sent him the vastly rewritten, Jeremiah Chechik draft, which had a completely different ending and Fincher said, ‘No, I wouldn’t be interested in doing that.’”

But then Fincher got his way and the original conclusion came back. And the rest is history. 

“Seven,” thanks to its insane ending, became a classic, and Walker had himself a career. Walker has since done uncredited work on Fincher-directed projects like “The Game” and “Fight Club,” and most recently he wrote the screenplay for the animated movie “Nerdland.”

But let’s look back one more time at that great ending of “Seven.”

 

 

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