Hey, do you remember explorers?

Hello and welcome? Hey, You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up.

I'm Chris.

I'm Donna.

And I'm Carlos.

And today we're revisiting Explorers.

Thank you. And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting Explorers. The turnover rate for Hollywood studio executives is shockingly high, and those regime changes can affect in-progress productions in any number of ways.

The executive who greenlit a particular film might not be the same one who's in charge once it comes time to market and release it.

Maybe it winds up getting recut or

reshot. Maybe it gets dumped into a handful of theaters without any fanfare. Or, as was the case for

director Joe Dante with the 1985 sci-fi adventure film explorers, the movie's taken away from you

before it's even finished and your slapdash rough cut is put in front of audiences as the final product.

Dante had been pursued for the project because of his success with Gremlins, but even when he signed on, he knew there were issues with the script's third act.

He was told that he and the screenwriter would be allowed to rework that section of the film over the course of production.

Even before the regime change, however, Explorers was an incredibly rushed production.

Dante did his best to navigate his cast and crew through the chaotic schedule,

but once the new executives took over, they were more interested in having him get to work on a sequel to

Gremlins than they weren't allowing him any more time to tinker with this. They also decided

on a new release date, a July weekend where they felt the film might perform extraordinarily

well. It was also six weeks earlier than originally planned. With many scenes still unfinished, Dante had no

choice but to start pulling more than an hour's worth of material out of his in-progress cut.

From there, he and the editor scrambled to try and make sense of the nonsensical mess they were

...