SAD: Hollywood Considered Remaking “Rudy” For College Basketball, But It Had The Same Ending Where The Players Weren’t Paid
With many believing it to be the best underdog movie of all time, ‘Rudy’ has only gotten better with age. But a recent unearthing from TriStar Pictures studio archives has provided sports-movie buffs with a tantalizing look at what could have been: a new script remaking ‘Rudy’ for College Basketball, which was unfortunately axed due to the fact that its ending, where none of the college athletes were paid for their many rigorous hours of dedication to their sport, was virtually identical to the original film.
Swapping out Notre Dame for UCLA, the script focuses on a young, working-class kid named Eddie who, despite his small stature, has an inextinguishable dream to one day play for the 11-time Division I championship-winning powerhouse. Eventually, Eddie builds up the courage to quit his unpaid internship and follow his dream, making it onto the basketball team to give them hundreds of hours of free labor as a redshirted junior.
Unfortunately, that’s where the movie lost its appeal: “I knew the movie was in trouble as soon as his mentor had the line, ‘Eddie, you’re five feet nothing, one-hundred and nothing, and you’ve got $120,000 in non-dischargeable student loans,” said focus screening viewer Denis Carazo. “Sure enough, we got to the end, he made that crucial block in the final seconds of the national championship, and then he got carried off by his team to go see his financial aid officer. Exactly like the original film.”
According to the documents, panic-stricken studio execs ordered rewrites of the script over 40 times, including one ending where Eddie did wind up getting paid, which test audiences universally panned as being “highly unrealistic.”
In the end, the idea was scrapped; but there is good news: anyone still wanting their ‘Rudy’ fix need only wait until next year, as TriStar has decided to just remake the original film shot-for-shot, but with Zendaya as the lead and with Seth Rogen as the voice of the football.
