How One Ending Change Tanked After the Hunt's Score

Well, that went sideways fast. Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt landed with a thud, and not a small one. We are talking critics, audiences, the box office — everyone bailed. And the wild part is, the reason feels pretty clear: Guadagnino ripped out the last 20 pages of the original script and swapped in a different ending that leaves the movie dangling instead of landing.

The short version: what happened

• Rotten Tomatoes: 40% (critics) and 40% (audience)
• Metacritic: 51
• CinemaScore: C- (rare, and only four films scored that low in 2025)
• Box office: $158,679 opening from six theaters on Oct. 10; wide rollout across 1,238 theaters hit just $680,000 on opening Friday; total sits at $1,746,189 (via Box Office Mojo)
• Runtime: 2 hours, 19 minutes

The fork in the road: two endings, two movies

After the Hunt started as a spec script by first-time writer Nora Garrett. Guadagnino told her he loved it — except the last 20 pages. In Garrett's version, Julia Roberts' Alma actually faces consequences for protecting a colleague accused of sexual assault. Her husband Frederik leaves. She resigns from Yale. She flies to Sweden to try to make amends with the mother of a man she falsely accused as a teenager. And crucially, she returns to testify on behalf of Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), the student accuser. It's a full-on reckoning, a moral choice made at great personal cost.

Guadagnino tossed that. His take: someone like Alma — a woman who fought her way out of a working-class immigrant upbringing into elite academia — would not torch her life like that. He wanted, in his words, reality and authenticity over tidy narrative justice.

"When Luca first attached, he basically said, 'OK, I love everything about this film except for the last 20 pages.' It was immediately right out in the open that he wanted the ending to shift. Partially, because when you think about the reality of how life works, Luca is very intentional and also very committed to truth and reality and verisimilitude."

- Nora Garrett to IndieWire

The ending we got

The final film jumps ahead five years. Alma is not ruined; she is the Dean of Yale. She runs into Maggie at an Indian buffet. Maggie admits, "I spent so long wishing for you to fail." Then the movie cuts to black on Guadagnino's own voice shouting "Cut!" — a meta flourish meant to nod to George Cukor's Rich and Famous (per Forbes).

Some folks (Andrew Garfield among them) called that final beat radical. Critics had other words: pretentious came up a lot. And audiences clearly hated walking out with no consequences, no resolution, no arc. For Guadagnino — whose Call Me by Your Name and Challengers were loved and awards-adjacent — this is his worst-reviewed movie to date.

What the original ending did that this one does not

Garrett's version gave the story the thing this genre usually needs: a spine. Alma would testify against Hank, the predatory professor she protected, completing an honest-to-God redemption arc. The Sweden sequence deepened it — the mother of Alma's deceased former lover refuses to see her, and Alma ends up confiding in her aging parents. Her mother gets one of those lines that sticks: "No one ever gets over anything."

That kind of moral clarity can still be complex. Promising Young Woman pulled it off (90% on RT, plus an Oscar). The Assistant did too (93% on RT). After the Hunt tried to zag away from that, but it picked the wrong moment to zag. As Slate basically argued, this might have felt provocative in 2016; in 2025, post-MeToo, it reads tone-deaf.

Why this burned so hot

That C- CinemaScore matters because it comes from opening-night crowds — the people most excited to be there. If they sour on a movie, word-of-mouth sinks it immediately. On Rotten Tomatoes, even verified ticket buyers vented about the lack of consequences. The consensus more or less said the film tees up big, incendiary themes and then shrugs at them, deflating its own provocation.

And the numbers back that up. The initial limited run was tiny. The expansion was worse. Once that Friday wide-release number came in at $680,000, it was over.

The uncomfortable takeaway

Look, I get what Guadagnino was chasing — a colder, messier truth where people do terrible things and still fail upward. But here, that choice undercuts everything the movie sets up for 2 hours and 19 minutes. You can subvert expectations without making the journey feel pointless.

Had the film kept Garrett's ending, maybe we are talking about a tough, grown-up drama with something to say, not a misfire with a meta wink. Instead, this turned a promising script into a case study in how an ending can make or break a movie — and sometimes, break it twice.

After the Hunt is currently in theaters (USA).