David Ellis’ Snakes on a Plane was only released under its working title because of star Samuel L. Jackson’s involvement, who rightfully realized that the the title fit it far better than the generic Pacific Air Flight 121 they wanted to change it to. It led to much hilarity on the internet and certainly made New Line Cinema excited about their little film, who capitalized on the internet buzz to order five days of reshoots to turn the PG-13 flick into an R-rated one, mostly because of Jackson’s infamous “motherfucking snakes” rant.
Of course, the film didn’t perform as well as people had hoped but a campy movie about killer snakes managed to double its budget in theaters, so I’d say they did pretty well.
Director David Ellis (Final Destination 2, Cellular) isn’t done with killer animals, though, and is currently hard at work on Untitled 3D Shark Thriller (as we previously reported.) But Vulture is reporitng that the director wants to release this film in September… under that very name. Relativity Media execs apparently hate the idea and want to give it a different one.
“I hated the original title [Shark Night 3D], too,” says Ellis, reached in his editing bay, “so at our weekly production meetings, I made everyone on the crew come up with names — Chums, Fins, Terror on the Lake — but they all seemed kind of cheesy. And so until I hear a better name, I like what we’ve got right now: Untitled 3D Shark Thriller. The title says everything you need to know: ‘We’ve got sharks.’ ‘It’s in 3D.’ and, ‘It’s a thriller.’”
He’s got a point there. Let’s hope they don’t mistake people laughing at it on the internet for interest to go to theaters, though.
Head to Vulture for Roger Corman’s thoughts on this and other ridiculous film titles.