Apparently ‘Shrek’ was originally made with Mike Myers voicing a Canadian accent.
Then Myers saw a rough cut of the film and decided a Scottish accent would be better for the main character.
And that tiny decision cost the studio somewhere between 4 and 5 million US dollars in reshoots.
10% of the film’s final total budget.
Now what’s interesting to me is, changing the accent before the film started would’ve cost nothing.
Pre production no work had been done, no audio recorded and no animation made.
The longer the project went on, the more expensive a core change like the character’s accent would’ve cost.
And so, one wonders.
A small bit more exploration done earlier on in the project could’ve saved a fortune.
And all it would’ve taken would be a few days (maybe even hours) of Myers trying out different options with the director, or getting feedback from the target audience, or an example from the animation department of how the finished product would look and an assuredness in the decision would’ve been reached.
There saving up to 5 million dollars.
Thomas Duggan 