Impact of the September 11 attacks on the entertainment industry
The September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001 had a significant impact on broadcast and venue entertainment businesses, prompting cancellations, postponements, and changes in content. In the United States and several other countries, planned television screenings of films and fictional programs which feature terrorism, plane crashes, bombs, or other related disasters were the primary subject were postponed or cancelled.
Films
Numerous films that were in production were cancelled, and many films were edited. There were various reasons given for the alterations, including keeping material up-to-date, as a gesture of respect for those who died, and to avoid trauma for those emotionally affected by the attack. There are also many films which were notably not edited.Roughly 45 films were edited or postponed due to the September 11 attacks.
Edited films
With the World Trade Center removed
A teaser trailer for Spider-Man was recalled, as it featured Spider-Man capturing a helicopter filled with criminals in a web spun between the Twin Towers. A poster with the World Trade Center reflected in Spider-Man's eye was also recalled, while the film's short teaser trailer also removed the towers from Spider-Man's eye reflection. Sony removed any mentions of the Twin Towers from the teaser images and trailer on the website. A shot of the World Trade Center was deleted from the film, but it can be found on the Sony Stock Footage website. The home video release of A Knight's Tale had the Spider-Man trailer removed as well. Two scenes were added to the film in response to the attacks: in the first, a group of New Yorkers attack the Green Goblin over the Queensboro Bridge, with one saying, "You mess with Spidey, you mess with New York!", and another saying "You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!". The second, a scene of Spider-Man hanging onto a flagpole with a large American flag, was seen in later trailers and at the end of the film.The WTC was digitally deleted from skyline shots in Zoolander, which was theatrically released nearly three weeks after the attacks. However, the Twin Towers were later restored for the 2016 Blu-ray release.
Don't Say a Word was theatrically released nearly three weeks after the attacks, and the filmmakers contemplated delaying its release, but decided against it. However, they cut out and replaced shots of the towers from the edit, such as the opening shot, which shows Brooklyn instead.
Men in Black II originally featured a climax that included the WTC, but the scene was changed to the Statue of Liberty.
Director Roger Michell had the WTC towers digitally removed from the opening main title sequence in Changing Lanes. In the DVD commentary, he admitted that it was a mistake to erase them and pretend they did not exist.
Shots of the World Trade Center were partially seen in Mr. Deeds: one was shot in the helicopter for the scene where Longfellow Deeds arrives in New York City, and one on the Upper West Side, which shows the entire Manhattan skyline. The towers were digitally removed in the scene where Deeds and Chuck Cedar play tennis, which was shot on Roosevelt Island in spring 2001.
Shots containing the World Trade Center were removed from Stuart Little 2, Serendipity, and Kissing Jessica Stein. Scenes of the WTC were also removed from People I Know, but they can be found on the DVD release in the deleted scenes featurette.
The scene in which the World Trade Center gets hit by meteors and catches on fire was edited out of many television broadcasts of Armageddon after the attacks.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York features a scene atop the WTC, which was edited out on several television channels. However, as of Christmas 2018, the scene with the WTC was restored.
Other changes related to the September 11 attacks
In the 2002 re-release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the dialogue "You're not going as a terrorist" was replaced with "You're not going as a hippie."In the ABC Family airing of Meet the Parents, the scene near the end in which Greg gets into an argument with the airline stewardess and his subsequent interrogation by an airline official was edited to remove all references to Greg mentioning the word bomb on the aeroplane.
In Spy Game, the level of smoke shown following a bombing was reduced because of its similarity to the smoking WTC wreckage.
A scene in The Time Machine where debris from the destroyed moon crashes into a building was edited due to its resemblance to the attacks.
Lilo & Stitch originally showed Stitch, Jumba, Pleakley, and Nani hijacking a Boeing 747 to chase down Captain Gantu and rescue Lilo through the streets of Honolulu. However, this scene was altered to show them taking Jumba's spaceship and chasing Gantu around Hawaii's mountains. The original scene was included on the special edition DVD.
The scene in An Extremely Goofy Movie where Max saves Tank from a burning fire was edited in post-9/11 versions and Disney Channel due to the fire being too similar to the attacks. However, the original scene was still intact in the Disney+ version.
The Bourne Identity was extensively reshot due to the fear of the CIA as the antagonist being wrongly interpreted as anti-Americanism. Due to the insistence of Matt Damon and Doug Liman, the footage was not included. On the special edition DVD are descriptions of how and why the film was changed.
A scene in The Powerpuff Girls Movie resembling the tragedy, with people falling from a toppling building and being ultimately saved by the Powerpuff Girls, was rethought and adjusted to avoid making a direct reference to the World Trade Center.
Fox shelved previously scheduled airings of The X-Files and Independence Day on September 14 and 16, respectively. They were replaced by respective airings of Nine Months and There's Something About Mary. The Peacemaker was also removed from ABC on the same day as Independence Day.
Die Another Day was originally going to end with a North Korean satellite attack on Manhattan, which was moved to the Korean Demilitarized Zone after the attacks.
Early versions of The Incredibles featured a scene where Mr. Incredible vents his emotions on an abandoned building, but ends up accidentally damaging a neighboring building as well. It was considered to be too reminiscent of the World Trade Center collapse and replaced with a scene where Mr. Incredible and Frozone rescue trapped civilians from a burning building.
Monsters, Inc. originally depicted the CDA blowing up a sushi restaurant as part of a decontamination effort. The scene was replaced with the restaurant being quarantined under a dome of plasma instead. The filmmakers described the decision to alter the film in the Blu-ray "round-table discussion" bonus feature.
The WTC was removed from the promotional poster for Sidewalks of New York, but the buildings remained in the film itself.
Delayed films
View from the Top was originally scheduled for Christmas 2001, but the release was pushed back to March 21, 2003, because the story revolves around a flight attendant on numerous planes.Collateral Damage was postponed for four months after being slated for release October 5, 2001, and features a terrorist bombing in front of a Los Angeles building. The film subsequently failed at the box office, which likely was a result of the public who felt the film was released too soon after the attacks.
Training Day was originally scheduled for release on September 21, but was delayed to October 5.
The Time Machine was delayed by three months from its original December 2001 release because of an eventually deleted scene where a meteor shower destroys New York City.
Big Trouble was postponed seven months because it involved a nuclear bomb being smuggled on board an aircraft; it was slated for September 21.
The release date of Bad Company, December 25, 2001, was pushed several months because the plot involved a criminal mastermind planning to detonate a bomb in the Grand Central Terminal.
Gangs of New York was intended to be released on Christmas 2001, but its release was delayed until a year later due to the September 11 attacks.
Deuces Wild was slated for release in September 2001 but was pushed back due to the attacks and storyline concerning violence in New York, and was eventually released in May 2002.
Buffalo Soldiers premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2001, but its wide release was pushed back two years until 2003 due to war themes.
Windtalkers was originally slated for a Christmas 2001 release but was pushed back until June 2002 due to its war theme, and had depictions of violence re-edited.
Hart's War was originally planned for release in December 2001, but its release was postponed until February 2002 due to war themes.
Cancelled films
A Jackie Chan film called Nosebleed, about a window washer on the WTC who foils a terrorist plot, was due to start filming on September 11, 2001. Snopes questioned the suggestion that this was any kind of "narrow escape", pointing out the uncertain nature of film development and noting "it was almost certainly as part of a plan drawn up and abandoned long before September 2001".James Cameron planned to make a sequel to True Lies, but canceled the project after the attacks, saying that "terrorism is no longer something to be taken lightly".
There were plans to have a sequel to Forrest Gump, but after the attacks, Eric Roth, Robert Zemeckis, and Tom Hanks said that the story was no longer "relevant" and it felt "meaningless".
Peter Berg had been set to direct heist film Truck 44 for Fox 2000 Pictures, which would have followed a group of FDNY firefighters who accidentally start a blaze in a ritzy Manhattan apartment building while robbing it, until Fox decided to shelve it in the wake of the attacks. In March 2002, Berg attempted to get the project restarted at Radar Pictures by rewriting it so it took place in Miami.
Columbia Pictures had scheduled Tick Tock, an action thriller written by Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry to be directed by Stephen Norrington and star Jennifer Lopez, to start production in January 2002, however due to the plot which centered around an FBI agent investigating an amnesiac man and his connection to a serial bomber targeting shopping malls in Los Angeles during Christmas the movie was cancelled.