The Cliff Scene from Piranha 3D

Every script you write has stuff that is changed, deleted or refashioned as it takes the journey from written page to moving image. And it’s no different with Piranha 3D.

In interviews and conversations online, I’ve mentioned a scene that Pete and I wrote for Piranha that was ultimately cut entirely from the film… and it was later kinda-sorta used as inspiration for a scene in the Piranha sequel (Piranha 3DD), although THAT scene was VERY different from our take. While we did no writing on Piranha 3DD, our original scene was part of the arbitration material for writing credit because it was used as a jumping off point for the van scene in the sequel.

Our original scene was cut from Piranha 3D for budgetary reasons (you’ll notice that it’s a pretty expensive scene to shoot)… and I’m sure Alex Aja had his own reasons for cutting it as well.

After a number of requests to see it (most recently from @dolph5troy on Twitter), I’ve linked the PDF to the full sequence for anyone who is interested. In our Piranha 3D script, the sequence was intercut with other scenes in the movie (I’ve cut all those beats out, unless it included an important transition in, or out, of a scene).

This scene isn’t the best we’ve ever written… FAR from it. It was written close to 15 years ago and never got the usual benefit of multiple rewrites leading up to the production because it was cut four or five drafts before the shooting the draft. BUT I’m obsessed with this sequence mostly because it was the first scene we wrote when pitching to write to Piranha 3D. An even earlier version of the scene was written before we ever got the job… it was written as an audition piece to get the producers to give us the source material to write Piranha. At the time, we’d never written a horror movie before so we needed to prove that we could do it. So, for all intents and purposes, this is the VERY FIRST HORROR SCENE I ever wrote. Which is why I have such affection for it. For me, it’s one of those scenes that “got away”. I wish we’d have seen it shot, especially by Alex (who I thought did an amazing job with P3D).

Anyway, take a look if you want.

Cheers.

Josh