‘American Sniper’ Was Originally Going To Show Chris Kyle’s Death Until His Wife Intervened

I haven’t seen American Sniper yet, so I don’t know precisely how it ends. I assume some sort of fade to black with the text “Chris Kyle was killed by a former veteran suffering from PTSD at shooting range in Texas.”

The trial of Eddie Ray Routh for that crime is currently underway. Some terrifying stories are coming from that.

That double murder Routh is accused of was originally going to be depicted on the big screen. According to the New York Daily News, it was written into the script. Only after Kyle’s wife intervened was it removed.

Director Clint Eastwood and other studio honchos were asked by Taya Kyle to keep out a planned reenactment of her husband and his friend getting gunned down by a troubled Marine at a Texas gun range.

“We talked about doing it,” writer Jason Hall told the Daily News. “But early on we made a promise to Taya.”

The 40-year-old mother of two called studio bigwigs five days after the fatal shooting by Eddie Ray Routh…

Kyle asked that the scene be adjusted because that’s not how she wanted her two children to remember their dad, Hall said.

I wonder how much that would have changed how the movie was received. Would it have? That would have been a ghastly way to end the film. Weird they even wanted to include it, to be honest.