List of movies and TV shows affected by the September 11 terrorist attacks
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 had a huge impact on the media, not just in terms of TV coverage. Television coverage of the terrorist attacks was the longest uninterrupted news event in the history of television. The three major networks were on the air 93 hours uninterrupted from the moment news first came that the first plane hit the World Trade Center.
Numerous movies were cancelled that were in production, and many movies were edited. The most common way of editing was to delete or obscure shots of the World Trade Center.
Edited or Delayed Movies
- Trailers for the movie Spider-Man were edited so a scene (not in the movie) showing Spider Man capturing a helicopter between the towers was deleted. In the actual movie, a shot of the World Trade Center was deleted.
- In the movie Zoolander, the WTC was digitally deleted.
- The release of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Collateral Damage was postponed for 4 months. The movie featured a terrorist bombing in front of an L.A. building.
- The film Big Trouble was postponed as well, because it involved a nuclear bomb being smuggled on board an aircraft.
- A picture of the WTC on the poster for Sidewalks of New York was removed.
- Shots of the WTC in Serendipity were digitally removed.
- The 2002 film Men in Black II featured a climax that included the World Trade Center. The building was changed to the Chrysler Building.
- The 2002 version of The Time Machine was held back because of a scene where a meteor shower destroys New York.
- In Vanilla Sky, producers wanted director Cameron Crowe to remove shots of the WTC. He did not, and they remain in the movie.
- Shots of the WTC in Kissing Jessica Stein were removed before its release.
- The movie The Matrix was removed from sale for a short period of time, due to a scene involving a helicopter crashing into a skyscraper.
- The movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, despite prominently featuring a badly damaged Twin Towers (albeit half submerged in water), was not edited.
In all, about 45 films were edited or postponed because of September 11.
Cancelled Movies
- A Jackie Chan movie called Nose Bleed, about a window washer on the WTC who foils a terrorist plot, was cancelled.
TV Shows
- An episode of The Simpsons entitled The City of New York Vs. Homer Simpson, which was partially set at the World Trade Center, was permanently pulled from syndication by some carriers, though many are now showing it again. Some individual carriers have removed World Trade Center scenes on their own, while the distributor of The Simpsons still releases the episode in full for syndication.
- The TV show 24 featured an exploding plane. The shot of the plane blowing up was removed, the premiere was postponed from October to November, and the plane plotline was never mentioned again.
- On The Agency, the pilot episode (about terrorism) was replaced with the fifth episode.
- The Nickelodeon cartoon Invader Zim had a scene of the destruction of New York City in the episode Door to Door, which was permanently edited out.
- Before 9/11, the syndicated version of the "Married With Children" episode "Get Outta Dodge - 8x17" featured a scene of two Arabs with a ticking bomb at the front door of Al Bundy's house offering to buy his Dodge for $40 and asking for directions to the Sears Tower. The scene was cut from the syndicated re-airings of the episode after 9/11.
- Perhaps the most eerie instance, the pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen, which depicted a plan by terrorists to fly a highjacked airplane into the World Trade Centre, actually aired in Australia on the evening of September 11, 2001, at 9 PM local time. Given the 12 hour timezone difference from New York City, the show began airing and was soon interrupted by the real attacks.
Theme Parks
- The Walt Disney World Attraction "The Timekeeper", a 360-degree film presentation that features a panoramic view of New York City, including the Twin Towers, closed on September 11, 2001 and has since only reopened during peak periods.
