Trivia / The Mist

• Creator-Preferred Adaptation: Stephen King preferred the significantly bleaker ending of the film.
• Executive Meddling: Frank Darabont wanted to have the film done in black and white, both as an artistic choice (throwback to the 50s and 60s horror movies and how blinding fog is in black-and-white) and to work with the budget he was given (special effects, especially CGI, always look better in monochrome). On top of that, he devised his own, far, far bleaker ending than in the source material. The studio executives vetoed both of those, insisting on color film and keeping the book ending, fearing those changes will kill the film in the box office. If not for King's personal involvement, they would have forced their way with the ending. And it wasn't until a director's cut version was released on Blu-ray the film was finally in black and white - which is the only difference Darabont made. Ironically, the film is still talked about due to that ending the execs didn't want to include.
• Follow the Leader: Half-Life was inspired by the book.
• Referenced by...:
  • Ultraman Tiga: The episode "A Fog is Coming" is a rather blatant reference to the novel, with a mysterious mist covering an observatory in the mountains, and flying monsters emerging from within the fog to feed on people. It turns out the mists comes from an asteroid spawning said monsters, who at the end of the episode merges together into the kaiju Magnia.
  • Half-Life and Silent Hill: The mysterious mist in both games are inspired directly by the novel.
  • Fanboy and Chum Chum episode "The Monster in the Mist", in which the main characters visit a convenience store and a worker there hallucinates them as a monster. In the end, a real monster shows up, but he's friendly.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original draft included some more details about the setting that was left out. Most noticeable was that there was supposed to be a scene that shows the Arrowhead Project going wrong.
  • Mrs. Carmody was originally to be depicted as eccentric as soon as she made her entrance. There's also a scene cut out that was supposed to show that her cult caused more casualties.
  • A giant centipede monster was meant to appear in the same scene as the pterodactyl monsters. This same scene also explained why Irene carried around a can of bug spray with her.
  • The studio wanted to stay faithful to the more hopeful ending of the original story, but as stated in Creator-Preferred Adaptation above, King himself preferred the much more bleak ending. In fact, when he first learned of the new ending, he personally intervened to get the studio to approve of it. If he hadn't done that, a film version of the first one might have gone through.
  • The film was intended to be in black and white. Studio was vehemently against that and made it a "take it or leave it" choice to deliver a colour movie. Notably, when the director's cut came out, it includes two discs: the regular movie and the second one, with monochrome version, with no other alternations beyond a short commentary by Frank Darabont explaining why.

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