Speaking to Sean Baker on the A24 Podcast, Safdie explained that the original script followed Timothée Chalamet’s ping-pong prodigy Marty Mauser well into the late 1980s. In that version, Marty leaves competitive sports behind and becomes a wildly successful businessman.
Safdie said Marty turns his shoe shop into “the most successful store on Orchard Street,” renaming it Marty Mauser’s Shoes. The business expands into franchises, Marty grows rich, leaves New York, builds a big family, and settles into a luxurious life far from the game he once believed he was born to play.
The final scene, however, was anything but peaceful.
According to Safdie, the movie originally ended with an older Marty attending a Tears for Fears concert with his granddaughter. As Marty reflects on youth, success, and the meaning of life while “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” plays, Kevin O’Leary’s character, Milton Rockwell, suddenly appears behind him and bites him on the neck — revealing Rockwell to be a real vampire.
Safdie said the team even built aging prosthetics for Chalamet, only for the final image to show that Rockwell hasn’t aged at all. When studio executives at A24 read the ending, Safdie recalled them asking, “This is a mistake, right?”
O’Leary later told Variety that he fully supported the vampire payoff. He said Safdie went as far as creating digital vampire teeth and added that, strange as it sounds, it felt like “the right punishment.”
The Shark Tank star also admitted he was unhappy with the final cut of Marty Supreme. O’Leary felt his character was “f—ed over,” while Marty and his family received what he called a “kumbaya ending.”
He even suggested a darker conclusion in which Odessa A’Zion’s character, Rachel, would die in childbirth as punishment for Marty’s selfish choices. Safdie reportedly considered the idea but ultimately rejected it, calling the ending too “sick.”
In the end, the vampire twist — and the even darker alternatives — were left on the cutting-room floor, but Safdie’s story offers a wild glimpse into just how strange Marty Supreme almost became.
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