Baz Luhrmann has always been one of those inventive directors who didn't seem interested in advice from others. I mean, who else would come up with the idea to have turn-of-the-century French lovers sing Paul McCartney songs, or turn Romeo & Juliet's Mercutio into a drag queen?

But it seems that when Luhrmann is dipping into a deep pocketbook, as he is with his upcoming epic Australia, the studios and the audiences get to make the rules. British paper The Guardian is reporting that Luhrmann was forced to change the ending of his movie after audiences found it too much of a downer. The entire article contains GIANT SPOILERS, but I won't include them here. Well, I'll give you a hint-- if you've seen Out of Africa, you can probably guess where Luhrmann was headed with this.

Distributor Fox apparently decided that a happy ending would mean better box office returns, and of course they're correct. Movies with downer endings, like The Dark Knight, Titanic or Gone With the Wind, never make any money.

Adding this to the fact that Luhrmann apparently still has not finished his film, Australia seems to be in big, big trouble. As I've said before, that's what people said about Titanic, but at least James Cameron got to end the movie however he damn well pleased. Thanks, Fox, for assuming audiences are idiots, and sorry, Baz, that you had to kowtow to these jerks. As far as I'm concerned you could have nuked the entire continent of Australia at the end, so long as the images stayed pretty and Hugh Jackman kept his shirt off most of the time.