Spoilers for Marty Supreme are ahead! Read with caution, and go watch the movie in theaters now.
You know, that vampire line in Marty Supreme line really stuck with me. It was shocking, and it came out of nowhere; however, it also fit in the movie. However, it turns out that line almost had a literal payoff, as Josh Safdie recalled his original vampire ending for his movie starring Timotheé Chalamet that made A24 say, “This is a mistake, right?”
Now, before we get into this first ending Safdie came up with, let’s discuss how Marty Supreme actually ends. After playing a match with Endo in Japan, Marty flies back to the States and meets his newborn son, with the final shot of the movie being a close-up on him as he tears up over his child. That, originally, was not the plan for this film's conclusion, and director Josh Safdie detailed his original idea to Variety, explaining:
He turns that [shoe store] into the most successful shop on Orchard Street. He changes it to Marty Mauser’s Shoes. Franchises, franchises again, leaves New York State, becomes a very rich man. All the metrics of success are there. His family grows, he leaves the city, has this beautiful house, and it ends with him at a concert for Tears for Fears with his granddaughter. They’re great seats, up front, and he’s watching it. And he’s thinking about ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World,’ and youth, and what does it mean, and he has this success, but he’s not doing the thing that he believed he was born on the planet to do.
Well, that’s certainly different. However, I see the vision. Things get weirder, though, and this is where the vampires come in. Continuing to explain his vision for the end of Marty Surpeme, Safdie recalled how Kevin O’Leary’s character, Milton Rockwell, would have shown back up in the final moments and proved he was actually a vampire by doing the following:
You’re on his eyes, we built the prosthetics for Timmy and everything, and Mr. Wonderful shows up behind him and takes a bite out of his neck, and that was the last image. And he hasn’t aged.
Now, this does tie back to Milton’s vampire speech in the movie, where he said that he was “born in 1601” and has “been around forever.” And it would have made the speech a whole lot more literal if the movie ended with Mr. Wonderful acting out a moment where he bit Chalamet’s titular character and turned him into an immortal being.
However, it sounds like A24 quickly said no to that idea, as Safdie explained what the studio told him when they heard about this ending:
[A24 said] ‘This is a mistake, right?’
You know, I see what the studio was saying, because this fantastical ending is wild, even for a movie as crazy, unexpected and chaotic as Marty Supreme. However, I also see why Safdie had this idea in the first place. I understand the vision, and I do think it ties back to the vampire speech and the movie's ideas about legacy in a fascinating way. Plus, Marty Supreme is a ping pong movie that takes so many unexpected turns, something like this could have been used as one last final twist.
Although I have to say, I’m happy they went with the ending they did. It was super powerful, and it’s one of the many reasons why Marty Supreme’s reviews are so great.
Now, to go and see the actual ending (which, I can confirm, does not include vampires) as well as Timothée Chalamet’s performance that won him a 2026 Golden Globe, you can catch Marty Supreme in theaters now.
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