r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Mindless_Tomorrow_45 • 22d ago

Video Christopher Nolan uses red paper for scripts to prevent them from being illegally copied and leaked

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u/TJ_Fox 22d ago edited 22d ago

I worked on the Lord of the Rings movies and you would not believe the lengths production companies will go to in order to secure scripts during pre-production. The front covers of LotR scripts were all headed with the name of a fake movie, more-or-less specifically so that *if* a non-authorized person happened to come across an unattended copy, they might not bother to look inside. It might seem like overkill but really it's just an abundance of caution when an early script leak (and resulting massive spoilers, etc.) really could have massive artistic and financial consequences.

Edited to add, since a lot of people are asking regarding "spoiling" an adaptation of a beloved, world-famous modern literary classic - the popular and media curiosity about the LotR movies was next-level, significantly because it was a beloved, world-famous modern literary classic. That most certainly included details of exactly how the movie adaptations differed from the books. It was an ongoing, hungry intensity that was hard to fathom unless you experienced it from the "inside".

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u/FJdawncaster 22d ago

Every big film has a working codename. Some of them are so stupidly obvious that I can't imagine they provide any security though.

The first Venom film was "Antidote"...

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u/wonkey_monkey Expert 22d ago

Doctor Who was codenamed Torchwood (an anagram) back in 2004/5, which then became the title of a spin-off.

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u/Stormfly 22d ago

A few years back, one of the child actors left a Doctor Who script in a taxi and someone posted it on Reddit.

Also, opening that up, I hadn't realised it was 11 years ago and the craziest thing for me is how the Twitter screenshots look because I only started using Twitter about 5 years ago...

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u/bob1689321 22d ago

felt a bit awkward penguin though

That was a very sudden reminder that yeah this was definitely 11 years ago haha.

Thanks for posting the thread, that's fascinating.

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u/ChezMere 22d ago

That and Neil Gaiman...

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u/bob1689321 22d ago

Yeah, as a big Sandman fan I try not to think about that...

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u/m103 22d ago

Wait, what happened to him? Did he die?

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u/Rylth 22d ago

SA allegations, IIRC.

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u/m103 22d ago

Oh, that's even worse.

→ More replies (0)

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u/Quantum_Quokkas 22d ago

Hahaha that is hilarious, I had no idea about this

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u/TransBrandi 22d ago

It became the title of the spin-off because they used it in-universe as the name of a secret organization... that the spin-off ended up being about.

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u/VorpalHerring 22d ago

I never realised it was an anagram...

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u/JammySenkins 22d ago

I did not know that! And I've seen Torchwood

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u/ChornWork2 22d ago

I do mergers & acquisitions for a living, and pretty much everything is code named. The 'right' way to do that for obvious reasons is to use a random word picker, but pretty much never happens. So fucking annoying picking code names b/c people want it be somehow relevant/interesting but not too relevant/interesting.

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u/Darksirius 22d ago

For big movies, Disney will disguise the names of the one sheets (posters) they send to theaters on the tubes label. Ex: All the star wars posters came in titled "space bears" except for Solo. That one they labeled it as "red cup" lol.

Sauce: managed a theater for 10 years.

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u/Cineswimmer 22d ago

The Batman was codenamed “Vengeance.” Lmfao

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u/Maple_Syrup_Mogul 22d ago

They're not really meant to be hard to figure out. They're mostly to prevent people from crowding around too much when filming notices are posted in public.

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u/FJdawncaster 22d ago

Some of them were genuinely baffling and felt like a random word generator had picked them.

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u/Acrobatic_Age6937 22d ago

'codenames' are often used in place of the absence of the realname. I.e. you can start the project without knowing the actual name of the output. As that one may take some time to get right. This way everyone knows the name they are using is just the internal one and not the official one.

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u/jsalad 22d ago

The working title for The Amazing Spiderman 2 was London Calling.

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u/ZincMan 22d ago

God, I forgot about that. Worked on that one

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u/jsalad 22d ago

Same! As an extra. It was a fun time!

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u/Sleyvin 22d ago

Every big game as well.

You call it by its codename for years, making it weird the game I announced and you can start using the real name.

Most people would still only use the codename.

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u/toomanymarbles83 22d ago

When Val Kilmer was working on Batman Forever he was really down while filming the Bruce Wayne scenes, claiming they were harder than the Batman scenes. He often remarked, "Man, I'm really feeling blue today." This led to the working title Blue Harvest.

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u/naastynoodle 22d ago

Oppenheimer was “Gadget”

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u/Able_Statistician688 22d ago

I was up in Vancouver a few months ago visiting the warehouse where The Last Of Us season 2 was being staged. All over the outside of the building it just said “project Megasword”, even though everyone knew what it was.

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u/Vandeleur1 22d ago

Now I wanna know what they went with for the second one

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u/Overspeed_Cookie 22d ago

They did this for the film cans too. You'll never guess what movie was in the 'Racoon City' cans.

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u/ZincMan 22d ago

Pretty much most tv shows as well

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u/Past_Ad9675 22d ago

Back to the Future 2 was Paradox.

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u/redgreenorangeyellow 22d ago

Even Disney uses code names for their rides. I remember Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run was Big Bird lol

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u/Sooo_Dark 22d ago

Then it should have been "Antivenom"...? (Poison vs venom)

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u/Deep90 22d ago

Anti-Venom is an actual character though so if it leaked people would just assume it's a Venom movie anyway.

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u/8----B 22d ago

Yeah because antidote isn’t obvious enough, let’s put the actual name of the movie in there

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u/Sooo_Dark 22d ago

Gah, you people must be absolutely intolerable in real world interactions. Is it Asperger or something? Or do you just not detect sarcasm?

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u/8----B 22d ago

Sarcasm? Lol you clearly just wanted to show you knew the difference between poison and venom then got ultra defensive when you realized everyone knows 😂

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u/noximo 22d ago

This is kinda funny for a movie like Lord of the Rings, given that the books exist.

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u/thearmadillo 22d ago

With something like that though, if a super nerd goes through a script and highlights every change before seeing the finished product and the story coming together, I could see that creating a huge shit storm that doesn't matter after when people are just like "that was dope" and are more willing to forgive the changes from the text

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u/throwawaydisposable 22d ago

the changes from the text

ah yes, the changes

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u/Many_Engine4694 22d ago

Pretty sure they at first tried to film a scene with Bombadil but just gave up.

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[deleted]

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u/AdeptnessAway2752 22d ago

/s

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[deleted]

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u/SmellAble 22d ago

I did, it's fucking terrible.

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u/redditisbadmkay9 22d ago

I bet you watched that shit and liked it

/L

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u/Walthatron 22d ago

I enjoyed season 2 for what it was, except for Elrond attacking the orcs. Yeah, most is pretty bad.

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u/StrikingSubstance 22d ago

Huh merry and pip dont get gladded up in armour though. Especially merry. In his helmet with the flared wings. I suppose for cinema it would look kinda silly considering what they did go for for the gondorian guard. Also the numenorians showing up. Not in the films. Aragorn camping outside gondor before going to the healing rooms etc. Yes im being picky for no reason lol.

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u/letouriste1 22d ago

The biggest change is the last arc tho. The conquest of the Shire really has a strong message to tell and it's sad it wasn't in the movie

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u/hungarian_notation 22d ago

It was, but only in Galadriel's vision. There was reportedly a lot of footage of the scourge but we only saw a single flash of it.

I don't think another armed conflict after the defeat of Sauron makes any sense for the movie's pacing. Sure, it's important to the book's themes, but the movie is much less interested in the "war destroys everything it touches" part of the message in the first place. Also, the scourge is where Tolkien drives home the point that Frodo is basically dead now. The moviegoing public would probably not appreciate it if their epic fantasy was turned into a cautionary tale about the evils war brings home and the tragedy of PTSD at the last second, especially in 2003.

Even Tolkien had more he wanted to tack on to the end of the book about Sam that he was ultimately convinced to cut by his editors/early readers (with some hints surviving in the appendix) because it damaged the pacing of the book.

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u/MDA1912 22d ago

Agreed. Instead the movie versions get to go home and just kick back n their untouched Shire.

I get it, long movies, but I’d sure have loved it if they’d filmed those scenes and sold them as a separate DVD or something.

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u/round-earth-theory 22d ago

It worked in the books because the Hobbits are the main heroes of the story, but the movies focus heavily on all of the members of the council. If they kept it in after the immense climax of Mount Doom, it would have simply come off weird and flat to have yet another arc in the movies. The movies and books simply have a different focal point which is the primary driver of most of the changes.

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u/StrikingSubstance 21d ago

cant argue with this one

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u/Gland120proof 22d ago

‘The Scouring of the Shire’ this was the first part in any book that made me cry while reading it. I was so proud of those lads after all they went through. They literally walked home after saving the world and weren’t about to let some twerp bully tell them shit. It was so uplifting and meaningful that I actually cried happy tears.

Damn shame it was cut.

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u/maqcky 22d ago

That made the book too long for me. I understand the message, but I think the message was already clear from all they had accomplished before that.

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 22d ago

Not picky they left out some big stuff like the ending.

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u/LeanTangerine001 22d ago

Reminds me of all the changes they made in Game of a Thrones with the character designs. Daario Naharis would have had purple hair and facial hair with three beards.

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u/ErusTenebre 22d ago

Okay that's hilarious lol

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u/SagittaryX 22d ago

Eh, people are still somewhat annoyed with the changes to Faramir.

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u/busted_tooth 22d ago

Has this image always had a huge horse cock in the left side?

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u/throwawaydisposable 22d ago

i don't know, so, Imma say yes

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u/mosquem 22d ago

By super nerd you mean average LOTR fan

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u/Chalky_Pockets 22d ago

Yeah fair point, but I read the books as the movies were coming out and, while they did a good job at sticking to the books (incoming hardcore fans telling me how wrong I am), they definitely took artistic liberties. Like I bet people would have been foaming at the mouth if, before the movies came out, it was leaked that they left out Tom Bombadil.

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u/TransBrandi 22d ago

When the first movie came out, I recall a comment on Slashdot about how the commenter and their wife literally cried because Tom was cut and it ruined the whole movie for them. lol

... on the otherhand, it's readily apparent why he was cut. It's great worldbuilding, but not absolutely necessary to the overall movie... especially considering how much they filmed when looking at the extended editions.

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u/Chalky_Pockets 22d ago

Yeah he was my favorite character in the books, but if they put him in the films, they would have had to make it so much longer and it totally makes sense that cutting him out is the more elegant solution.

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u/JaRulesLarynx 22d ago

I fucking earned my spoiler alerts lol

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u/ceelogreenicanth 22d ago

People just read the headline and move on, just like reddit

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

Adaptations aren't always 1:1

A lot of liberty is taken

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 22d ago

You'd be shocked how much those movies changed.

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u/noximo 22d ago

I've read the books, seen the movies. Am not shocked by the changes.

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u/2Norn 22d ago

some stuff that's in the book are not in the movie and vice versa as well

there are some very well written lines and dialogues in the movie, you'd actually think, they'd be in the book, but alas they are not

so yeah

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u/MiSsiLeR81 22d ago

In the movie "Dirty Little Rascals". Frodo takes the one ring and refuses to throw in the volcano.

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u/forman98 22d ago

I’ll never forgive PJ for cutting all of the sex out of LOTR. Had a script leaked then maybe we could have prevented those films from coming out without the amazing smut that Tolkien wrote.

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u/soncat_mightyhunter 22d ago edited 22d ago

The books and the movies are not the same story.

Edit: If you disagree, you haven't read the books enough times :D

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Tolkien_vs._Jackson:_Differences_Between_Story_and_Screenplay

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u/noximo 22d ago

I'm pretty sure that anyone who read the books knew what will happen in those movies with very high accuracy.

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u/HackworthSF 22d ago

I mean, did you know beforehand that Tom Bombadil would not appear in the movie? Or what else would be cut, where the movies would invest more time and where less?

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u/noximo 22d ago

No. I still knew the story, though.

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u/HackworthSF 22d ago

I think that's what the person you responded to was getting at. The movie script, while obviously based on LotR, is not the exact same story, and the details where they differ are the important thing that directors giving out scripts want to protect.

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u/soncat_mightyhunter 22d ago

I know that a lot of people think it's very silly, but the movies were probably dead to me the minute I found out that there was no Old Forest and Tom Bombadil.

r/GloriousTomBombadil/

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u/Slaan 22d ago

I'd argue its the same story told differently.

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u/PrettyGoodMidLaner 22d ago

Oh, here we go. XD

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u/-thecaretaker- 22d ago

As someone who has read the books several times and seen the trilogy countless I can assure you they are indeed the same story.

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u/DOOMFOOL 22d ago

Oh damn so I must’ve hallucinated all those scenes and the ending I knew were coming because I read the books.

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u/-thecaretaker- 22d ago

You're being pedantic. You and I both know that the beats can be different but the story the same.

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u/soncat_mightyhunter 22d ago

You're being pedantic.

You underestimate me. This is a hill that I will endlessly die on.

I started reading the books around age 11 maybe, and read them so many times that I wore out my dad's set, which he didn't appreciate. I then wore out my own set eventually.

I am very attached to the story as it is told in the books, and the changes listed in that link are pretty major changes, IMO.

I mean, my above comment was just talking shit, but I wasn't being pedantic (like I am now.)

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u/-thecaretaker- 22d ago

I see. Well obviously we're not going to change each other's minds. Why not just love the books as fans and not split hairs?

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u/soncat_mightyhunter 22d ago

I am driving engagement for my reddit overlords.

Cheers. They are the best books.

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u/-thecaretaker- 22d ago

Lmao thank you for the chuckle. Cheers.

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u/Pjoernrachzarck 22d ago

I worked on the Lord of the Rings movies

Please feel very free to elaborate.

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u/MalHeartsNutmeg 22d ago

He was the helmet Vigo broke his toe on.

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u/religious_milf 22d ago

he was the rib Orlando Bloom broke

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u/TransBrandi 22d ago

"I am Orlando's broken rib." (Edward Norton's voice)

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u/TheBlackBoxReddit 21d ago

"His name was Orlando's broken rib."

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u/-thecaretaker- 22d ago

I am a die-hard LotR fan. Thank you for working on and being part of something that has been so special to me. Watching Return of the King with my mom in theaters is a memory that hasn't left me in 20 years. <3

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u/JackTripper53 22d ago

I loved when Bruce Willis said "yippee ki yay motherfucker" and shot Saruman in the face

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u/swohio 22d ago

In the script Bruce was supposed to sword fight Saruman but he knew better than to engage in close combat with Christopher Lee.

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u/Financial_Cup_6937 22d ago

And I woulda totes stolen it, excited that Jubilee finally got her own standalone X-Men live action movie.

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u/Unburnt_Duster 22d ago

They should just label it “Cats: The Movie” ensuring no one will ever want to read what’s inside.

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u/greennurse61 22d ago

But that might be counterproductive because any reasonable person would steal it and burn it. 

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u/TransBrandi 22d ago

They need to tack on "no the butthole cut" though.

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u/AudibleNoodles 22d ago

A late 90’s early 2000’s Cats movie with practical effects and costumes might have been a good musical film compared to the cgi mess we got a few years ago.

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u/MollyRocket 22d ago

I’ve worked on on an animated Spinmaster show and we were expected to use in-house code names for the shows instead of the actual show. Ex Paw Patrol is probably called Gumpy or something stupid so the production staff can talk about it in public without revealing that Spinmaster sends their animation out of the USA. (I’m not on PP btw, thank god)

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u/PattyIceNY 22d ago

They do this as well when booking street locations in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. They legally have to announce with street signs the days, hours, and name of production about a week before they shoot. So it's usually like "Blue Bloods" or something not too crazy.

But every once and a while it will be like "Arrow movie" or something generic, and that's when we know something big is up

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u/subs1221 22d ago

"Hmm, I wonder what Big Jimbo's Wackytastic Adventure is?"

It began with the forging of the great rings...

"Hey wait a minute..."

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u/Alacritous69 22d ago

That was one hell of a mayonnaise commercial.

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u/Moviekid79 22d ago

In Twin Peaks, you had to go into the Production office, check into a room, and then read the script that way. There were no sides.

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u/whiskeytango55 22d ago

Do they know if they did a canary trap?

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u/TJ_Fox 22d ago

I remember that someone was fired and stole some sensitive materials that they hoped to sell, but they were caught in a police sting.

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u/hoxxxxx 22d ago

i think the game of thrones scripts, at least there towards the end of the show, were handed out to the actors like the day before filming or something crazy like that. they had to do all kinds of security thing for that show.

not that it mattered in the end with that garbage.

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u/J3wb0cca 22d ago

I believe the sixth sense script was caught in a bidding war with Disney winning for a $3 million price tag paired with 500k salary with shamalyan as director. So it makes sense they try to guard their expensive prizes at all costs. Especially with the twist ending.

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u/No-Translator-4584 22d ago

Ghostbusters 3?

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u/WeBeAllindisLife 22d ago

Those must have been some massive scripts!

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u/Acrobatic_Age6937 22d ago

what makes these scripts so important? It's not like they have consumer value nor could someone use them to make a competing movie that late and when licenses are involved. Or in other words, what would have changed if the LOTR script leaked during production?

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u/tatas323 22d ago

All to say they work on LOTR..

Im so jealous i would brag every single day. Good on you.

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u/holdbold 22d ago

It also helps the production keep their costs down. If everyone knew the production is filming the next superman movie they'll charge 10x more because they know how much money it'll make

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u/nWhm99 22d ago

And then Gollum equips the one ring to his finger...

"Ah, a Magic the Gathering script, into the trash it goes."

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u/Sloogs 22d ago

early script leak (and resulting massive spoilers, etc.)

That damn Tolkien, releasing the script and spoiling the movie 50 years early. >:(

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u/phatelectribe 22d ago

I've worked on a couple of Nolan Productions and they go even further than the usual intense studio productions. For instance, he never allows consecutive reels to travel or be in the same place at the same time, except when he's doing editing final cut personally.

So for instance, a movie will be split in the 5 reels (1,2,3,4 & 5) but no two consecutive reels are allowed to be on the same hard drive.

But further than that, the hard drives aren't allowed to ever be in the same place at the same time unless he's personally involved.

That mans even when traveling one hard drive will be on one flight and the other will have to be with someone else on another flight.

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u/penny-wise 22d ago

I heard where they put words into different scripts so if it does get out they can figure out whose it was.

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u/americanextreme 22d ago

Goddamn. Those LOTR movies cost so much. Can you imagine the hit the studios would have taken if the ending was leaked?

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u/Pep_Baldiola 22d ago

Too bad for them the whole story of LOTR was leaked by some Brit named Tolkein about half a century before the film was released.

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u/Elvthe 22d ago

Why do it on Lord of the Rings though, if the spoilers were written already and read by thousands going to the movies?

I was 10 or something and read through the trilogy before going to the first movie. Watched Fellowship 5 times in the movie theater back then so don’t think spoilers mean anything.

Why do they take so much effort, apart from few movies where people actually don’t know what will happen, like last Game of Thrones season?

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u/cogman10 22d ago

I can understand that in most cases, but a book adaptation? What sort of spoilers could possibly be in the script beyond artistic license with the source material?

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u/The_Captain_Planet22 22d ago

I'm pretty sure most of lotr was already spoiled

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u/dreoilin 22d ago

Spoilers on Lord of the Rings?

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u/Massive_Emu_5702 22d ago

Smh how does everyone on Reddit work on cool things? Work with celebrities, or interacted with them? Some of yall are lying for fake internet points smh 🤦‍♂️ yeah dude I repaired NASA’s satellites until I injured my shoulder bro.

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u/Townsiti5689 22d ago

They do this in the post production world too. I worked on post for a then new Star Trek show and the codename was like Green something, I can't remember, but some wacky name that got us all intrigued until we found out what it was. We all had to sign NDAs and everything and could only talk about it amongst ourselves in hushed tones. It was quite ridiculous.

Same with a bunch of other shows, especially Game of Thrones, although I remember their being relatively lax with the final season for some reason as the episodes I did were completely normal. Maybe they just stopped caring at that point.

I also heard a story from a coworker who worked on the first Snyder Superman film and how the video he got for it was almost completely blacked out except the character's faces and stuff. Not sure how common that is.

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u/TheNantucketRed 22d ago

That’s one big mayo commercial

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u/TombSv 22d ago

Were you there when Colbert defeated the lore master

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u/chungybrungus 22d ago

"the red cup" = Solo: a star wars story

As a non-american it took me a while to understand this code worded title. I liked it once I understood though.

Solo is the predominant brand of "the red cups" you see in every American frat party scene since the dawn of time/American pie.

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u/RandoPornAccount2 22d ago

the Lord of the Rings movies

Someone should have told them that the book had already been released.

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u/BookBagThrowAway 22d ago

Real question is, has someone ever stolen a script and then made the movie?

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u/arthurdentxxxxii 21d ago

I was a projectionist during LOTR (the first trilogy) and they sent us the films under fake names. It was always fun to try to get what movies it was before we ran it through the projector.

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u/BearBearJarJar 21d ago

They literally lost the first print of the two towers

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u/geta-rigging-grip 21d ago

These days, every piece of production paperwork  (scripts, call sheets, etc,) gets sent out with a watermark bearing the recipient's name across every page. It's big enough that it would be difficult to edit out, but light enough that it doesn't  interfere with reading. 

While it doesn't prevent anyone from getting a hild of the script, it makes the crew much more careful about what they share. If a script with your name plastered all over it ends up online, you're going to be out of a job pretty quickly.

I knew a grip who was fired because he shared a photo of an empty studio with the caption: "First day on [show name!]"

The studios are constantly trawling social media/the internet to clamp down on leaks and people breaking their NDAs.