The ridiculous working titles of famous movies

THE titles of some movies seem pretty obvious. Like Titanic. It makes sense. Why would you call it anything else?

But Hollywood execs actually had some other ideas in mind. And they were rather bad.

Production studios often give their films “working titles” before they settle on the one they like the most. Sometimes it’s an intentional move to throw other studios off the scent — and other times it’s just a really rubbish name.

Titanic

Before Titanic was announced, James Cameron began filming icebergs off the coast of Nova Scotia under the film’s fake title Planet Ice. All this effort just so other studios didn’t find out he was making a film about the big ship. And even before they settled on the obvious title of Titanic, there was a moment when it was called Ship Of Dreams.

American Pie

The cult teen classic was actually meant to be called Teenage Sex Comedy That Can Be Made For Under $10 Million That Your Reader Will Love But The Executive Will Hate. While the title was more than accurate, it would have made asking for a ticket at the box office quite painful.

Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets

The second instalment to the Harry Potter franchise, The Chamber of Secrets, was given the working title Incident On 57th Street — after the Bruce Springsteen song. The name was used to avoid crazy Harry Potter fans while filming on the streets of London.

Annie Hall

The working title for this Woody Allen classic was It Had to Be Jew. This was back in 1977, when disco and puns were all the rage — and subtle political incorrectness was as common as indoor smoking.

The Avengers

As a way of keeping the much-hyped film The Avengers top secret, Marvel gave the movie a wacky working title. After filming wrapped, one of the film’s stars, Tom Hiddleston, blew the cover and revealed to Elle magazine: “Marvel has these code names for projects and the code name for The Avengers was Group Hug.”

Talladega Nights

The slightly dirty sounding title High, Wide and Handsome was tossed around before they settled on the final name for this Will Ferrell classic. Either way, both titles were a definite improvement on the very first effort: Untitled Will Ferrell NASCAR Comedy.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

The working title for this Steven Spielberg classic overlooked the whole ‘alien’ thing and was simply A Boy’s Life. Sounds stupid — but there was a good reason. Spielberg was so concerned that another studio would discover and plagiarise the plot that as well as giving it a fake name, all actors had to read the script behind closed doors and everyone on set had to wear an ID card.

The Dark Knight

Director Christopher Nolan tried to keep The Dark Knight top-secret when it started filming in Chicago — so he gave it the unusually romantic title Rory’s First Kiss. But it didn’t fool everyone. When Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper saw a casting call looking for “real police officers, sheriffs, county guards and bagpipers”, he took a quick look on IMDB and joined the dots. He wrote in his column:

“Is there a Bat fan in the world that doesn’t know Rory’s First Kiss is actually The Dark Knight, which has been filming in Chicago for weeks...... When you identify the studio, director and stars, even the most casual fan is an imdb.com click away from determining the film’s real title.”

Not Another Teen Movie

This teen comedy became a cult favourite for its mashed-up storyline that parodied other cliche teen movies. And its original title was actually perfect: Ten Things I Hate About Clueless Road Trips When I Can’t Hardly Wait to Be Kissed.