A major facet of Margo’s night of revenge has officially been cut from PAPER TOWNS.
In the first major change we’ve seen so far, Margo and Quentin’s SeaWorld break-in has been cut from the film adaptation of John Green’s PAPER TOWNS.
Executive producer Wyck Godfrey and screenplay writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber confirmed that the excursion to SeaWorld, the only major theme park that Margo Roth Speigelman hadn’t broken into, was cut in the screenwriting phase. Instead, the characters will go directly to the SunTrust Building after wreaking havoc on their enemies.
The team admits that the decision to exclude the theme park was largely due to the 2013 documentary BLACKFISH, which exposed the dangers of orcas in captivity and heavy-handedly accused SeaWorld of animal abuse, making the park fairly controversial.
Godfrey said:
“Since John wrote the book, the documentary [Blackfish] came out. I think it’s a little less playful to go to SeaWorld now.”
Realistically, filming in the park was likely to be an expensive venture for the film. Avoiding SeaWorld was probably a financial decision to keep costs down as well.
Though we love the book, we don’t think the SeaWorld scene added anything too necessary to the overall story arc, so we’re feeling okay about the cut. What do you think?