The following contains SPOILERS for the ending of Disney’s Haunted Mansion.
Disney’s new Haunted Mansion movie is the company’s second attempt to turn the iconic theme park attraction into a film. The first time around, a Haunted Mansion movie failed to catch on, so one can certainly imagine there was a bit of extra effort to make the new film more successful, and that apparently included completely changing the film’s ending before release.
I had a chance to talk to Haunted Mansion’s VFX supervisor Edwin Rivera prior to the film’s release and in a discussion about the more complex or difficult effects to create, he mentioned that while a lot of the movie was actually done with practical effects, the entire finale sequence was a CGI affair. This was out of necessity for two reasons. The first was that it included a lot of ethereal ghost characters that couldn't be created any other way. The second reason was that the entire ending was done in reshoots, so there wasn’t enough time to create the sequence practically. Rivera told me…
The cemetery at the end, that whole end sequence was a sequence that we came up with after we had finished shooting the movie. So we came back to Atlanta and reshot it. But, you know, there wasn't the time or the resources necessarily to fully create a full cemetery. So all of that was CG. So that was particularly challenging, making this entire world that surrounded our characters that felt creepy but not distracting.
The finale of Haunted Mansion sees the mortal characters coming together with many spirits in an attempt to cast a spell in order to trap the Hatbox Ghost, the Haunted Mansion ride character who is the one at the center of the hauntings and deaths in the movie. With all the ghosts flying around, and the massive destruction that occurs in the graveyard, it would have been a significant undertaking to do it all practically. Had this been built into the original production budget, it likely could have been done with at least a practical set. But under the circumstances. It had to be done digitally.
Recently, Haunted Mansion director Justin Simien has talked about the fact that the movie previously had a different ending (per THR), but that test screenings, as well as his own changing feelings over the course of production, led him to go in a different direction.
The new Haunted Mansion is getting a better response from critics than the previous one did, though the reaction isn't overwhelming. The same is the case with Haunted Mansion's box office. Maybe when the movie arrives on Disney+, it will find its audience, and when that happens, perhaps the extra content that comes with it will give us a look at the movie's original ending.
