Timothée Chalamet continues his awards-season run thanks to Marty Supreme, but a newly revealed creative detour explains why the movie almost went fully off the rails. According to those involved, the film once flirted with a supernatural twist that left A24 scratching its head, per Gizmodo.
In the finished cut, Marty’s pivotal confrontation with Milton Rockwell, played by Kevin O’Leary, lands as psychological intimidation. Rockwell claims he has lived for centuries, warning Marty that success gained through betrayal brings emptiness, not fulfillment. The line chills because it sounds metaphorical, a last-ditch attempt to scare Marty into honoring a deal. Early drafts, however, meant every word literally.
During a recent appearance on the A24 Podcast, filmmaker Josh Safdie admitted that the original ending leaned hard into horror. Marty would return to the United States, rack up decades of success, and never age. The closing image followed him and his granddaughter to a Tears for Fears concert in the 1980s, where Rockwell appears and bites Marty’s neck, confirming his vampiric curse.
An Ending Too Wild to Ignore
Safdie explained that the team even built prosthetics to age Chalamet’s face while keeping his body untouched, reinforcing the idea that Marty gained eternal life at the cost of purpose. Rockwell’s bite sealed the message, win the game, live forever, stay unhappy. The reaction from A24 quickly signaled concern. Executives reportedly asked whether the scene counted as a mistake, unsure how audiences would digest such a left turn.
The creative team eventually agreed. By stripping the vampire reveal, the film preserved ambiguity and grounded its themes in human consequence rather than genre shock. What remains now feels eerie without going absurd, a choice that helped Marty Supreme connect with viewers instead of confusing them.
Still, the abandoned ending now joins the hall of infamous alternate finales. It also adds another layer to Chalamet’s performance, proof that sometimes restraint, not spectacle, delivers the sharpest bite.
