after shooting wrapped, in August 2004, before the film’s release, and was replaced by Craig Ferguson. On January 17, 2004, the extensive reshoot wrapped. The new ending of the film was much more emotional and tragic, and featured Jackson's character begging his girlfriend Ellie to kill him to end the curse. An article about the film in Fangoria #241 included pictures of a head prop for Jake's original death scene. From all versions of the film which were test screened to audiences (excluding the original version, which was never test screened), this one scored the highest, but Dimension Films was dissatisfied with it and demanded a new one. Actor Jesse Eisenberg, who, along with Christina Ricci, was one of the few actors to work in all the different versions, stated: “The crazy part is that after we filmed the whole second version of the film, we had to go back for a third re-shoot which lasted about 20 days. That's like the length of an independent movie. And then we had to go back a fourth time for like 10 days and they made shirts that said Cursed 4: Back for More." The new ending depicted Jake as the main villain, willing to kill both Ellie and Jimmy. According to Patrick Lussier, the final budget for the film was close to $90–100 million. In the final round of reshoots, werewolf actor Derek Mears improvised the infamous shot of the werewolf flipping off Ellie and Jimmy during rehearsal with Craven. Scott Nimerfro was at one point brought in during reshoots to script new scenes, including an opening sequence of the werewolf jumping through the Hollywood sign that was scrapped due to budget limits. In 2014, Judy Greer spoke of the film in an interview: "I don't know why that movie got so fucked up. I don't understand it. I thought the script was fine. Honest to god, I didn't get the big deal. I don't know who kept making them fuck with it. Then we shot the movie for, like, seven years. I think they said we had four movies worth of footage. It was so fun, but so weird. I don't get it. I couldn't figure it out." In 2018, Christina Ricci also spoke briefly about the film in an interview: "It was one of those studio movies that just got horribly screwed up." In 2019, Jesse Eisenberg gave his