Filming
Principal photography was supposed to start on January 27, in order to meet the already-locked release date of August 8, 2003, but delays in pre-production forced Dimension Films to push the start date back to mid-March. In late January, a new release date was announced and set on February 4, 2004.
With a budget of $35 million, Cursed commenced shooting in Los Angeles on March 17, 2003, on a scheduled 15-week shoot.
The set used for the high school is Torrance High School, the same used for Sunnydale High on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and West Beverly High on Beverly Hills, 90210 and its spin-off 90210. Filming also occurred at Verdugo Hills High School for the scenes involving Jimmy Myers, Jesse Eisenberg's character. Mandy Moore's opening scene was shot over a two-night period on the roof of The Bel Age Hotel in Hollywood. Singer Sheila E. appeared in this scene as herself, playing with her band at the costume ball for PETA. The car accident was shot on Mulholland Drive and some interiors were built inside the L.A. Center Studios. More scenes were filmed at the Santa Monica Pier and in Hollywood Boulevard.
Entertainment Tonight did interviews with Ulrich and Ricci when original version was being filmed, and their report included behind the scenes footage of some scenes from it, like Ulrich's character Vince walking near the pier at night, another scene in same location showing him jumping down on beach and landing on all fours, scene where he and Ricci's character Ellie are running out of her house and another scene after that one where they jump down to the streets which based on the original script, was the beginning of the scene where werewolf chases after them but they get to Vince's limousine and ultimately manage to escape.
In early June 2003, after 54 days of filming and with only about six days left to shoot the final confrontation at the Hollywood Wax Museum, Dimension Films decided to put the movie on hold because top executives at the company were not happy with the film's ending or how the special effects were progressing, specifically the look of the film's lead lupine.
Rick Baker was preparing the final transformation effects when production stopped and asked Weinstein to let his team finish the work in order for it to be ready for the reshoot.
"We were doing some really cool transformation stuff [but] it wasn't quite done so I said, 'Listen, if you ever think the film's gonna pick up again, if you can keep a number of my people on for another month we can have this transformation stuff, we'll put it in a box and we'll be ready to go. If they disperse now it's gonna be like starting again because I need to have the same people." Weinstein eventually refused.
Editor Patrick Lussier, a frequent collaborator of Craven, had just finished working on re-shoots of Darkness Falls when he was brought in to work on Cursed, which was nearing the end of its principal photography. According to Lussier, the unfinished original version of the film ran about 90 minutes long, and the only thing it was missing, besides the ending, was the score and all the visual effects.
The movie was put back into a development phase during which all parties discussed on the outcome. Several options were considered, including shooting the final confrontation as it was originally written or transform the script into something different, saving as much filmed footage as possible. One alternative was to turn the characters of Jesse Eisenberg and John C. McGinley into werewolf hunters.
Ultimately, the original screenplay went under a major rewrite that turned Ellie and Jimmy into estranged siblings and morphed Vince into Ellie's mysterious boyfriend Jake. From those 90 minutes, the new version only included about 12 minutes of the original footage.
After a tentative September restart, the movie officially went back into production on November 17, 2003. "Quite an extraordinary amount of new material is going to be shot, and a lot of material is going to be thrown away," Craven said at the time. Rick Baker, who had created the original werewolf design, left the project because of scheduling conflicts and KNB EFX Group came on board to oversee all the new makeup effects.
The exteriors for Jake's new club Tinsel were shot in Vine Street, next to The Capitol Records Tower, Hollywood and Jimmy and Ellie's house was built on the Universal Studios backlot.
In the film, Ellie works among the crew of The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, with Kilborn making a cameo appearance and Scott Baio, as himself, being booked to appear on the show. Kilborn left the show a few months after shooting wrapped, in August 2004, before the film's release, and was replaced by Craig Ferguson. Originally, during the rewrites, Bob Weinstein wanted the movie to open with an animated opening sequence similar to Scooby-Doo, he wanted to get Disney animator Eric Goldberg to make the sequence, along with a small cameo, But Goldberg declined twice.
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 ten 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 thoughts about the troubled production and the film: "The first movie was more interesting and provocative. I don't know why it wasn't working. Now that we know the behind-the-scenes of the Weinstein company, it makes sense as to why it was so chaotic." About the troubled production, he said: "They filmed 90% of the bigger budget version… the first movie was this very splashy thing. The second version was definitely cutting corners in a lot of different ways. And the plot? I thought it was so stupid. I thought the plot was so cliché. They made us brother and sister? The things that they kept [from the original film] were little snippets. Like a car rolling down a hill. They kept that shot."
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