“Put it in the contract”: how Brad Pitt changed the ending of ‘Seven’
It’s easy to see why David Fincher doesn’t view Alien 3 as his directorial debut when he was beholden to the grubby fingerprints of studio interference, but much the same could have been said of Seven had Brad Pitt not intervened.
It’s also very easy to see why Fincher viewed his sophomore feature as his true breakthrough because it set the tone for what was to follow. An intricately plotted story, compelling characters, a lurching sense of dread, and several revelations that continually upend expectations would become hallmarks of his filmography, and none of them were present in Sigourney Weaver’s third outing as Ellen Ripley.
The ending of Seven is one of the most famous in modern cinema and a perfect example of how something that goes completely unseen can have even more impact than the grisly details. Everyone knows that the head of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Tracy Mills is in the box, Pitt’s husband David knows it, Morgan Freeman’s William Somerset knows it, Kevin Spacey’s John Doe knows it, and so do the audience.
Even though the disembodied cranium isn’t shown in full, the implication is even more powerful. New Line Cinema repeatedly tried to intervene in attempts to lighten the morbid tone and change the finale completely, with revisions by screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker having Tracy survive and the head in the box be replaced by the Mills’ dog instead. Needless to say, it wouldn’t have been the same.
In fact, Pitt admitted that when he agreed to star in Seven, he wanted it written into his contract and made legally binding that the original ending where Mills realises his wife has been decapitated remains intact. Beyond that, he wanted it guaranteed that he’d shoot and kill the culprit in cold blood to ensure John Doe’s meticulously crafted crimes would be ended out of sheer passion.
Even though Mills is a by-the-book member of law enforcement, he’s still carrying a gun in the middle of nowhere when he discovers the killer he and his partner had apprehended and kneels right in front of him has murdered his wife. That’s the sort of situation where morality gets left at the door, and Pitt knew that full well, as he explained to Entertainment Weekly.
“With Seven, I said, ‘I will do it on one condition: the head stays in the box. Put in the contract that the head stays in the box,'” he shared. “Actually, there was a second thing, too: ‘He’s got to shoot the killer in the end. He doesn’t do the ‘right’ thing, he does the thing of passion’. Those two things are in the contract.”
The Academy Award winner noted that after test screenings, the studio was beginning to try and nudge everyone back towards the light, suggesting how “he would be much more heroic if he didn’t shoot John Doe,” operating under the impression “it’s too unsettling with the head in the box”. It is, without a doubt, but that’s kind of the point. It was the bigwigs who also floated that “maybe if it was the dog’s head in the box”, it would still work, but Pitt and Fincher thankfully stuck to their guns and won out.