The Butterfly Effect (2004) on Netflix
Evan Treborn blacks out as a boy and keeps journals to fill the gaps in his memory. At college, reading an old entry sends his adult mind back into his childhood body.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.6/10560,803 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes34%
Trailer
Plot summary
Evan Treborn is a boy in a small town whose mother raises him alone. His friends are Kayleigh Miller and Lenny Kagan, and Kayleigh's brother Tommy. Evan suffers blackouts, coming to in places with no memory of how he got there, and the people around him think he makes them up to stay out of trouble. Starting at seven, he keeps a diary of the lost stretches. At college, reading an old entry pulls him back into his childhood body with his adult mind in charge. He returns to the past to change what happened and set things right for himself and the others. Each change reshapes the present in ways he did not intend.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Butterfly Effect (2004)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Eric Bress and his co-writing partner J. Mackye Gruber penned The Blackouts in 1998; their first draft, which included "a 6-year-old running around shooting cops in the head", was deemed too dark for general audiences by their manager.
SPOILER
Bress and Gruber put The Blackouts on ice for two years until producers J.C. Spink and Chris Bender asked to read it; haunted by the script's ending, where the main protagonist strangles himself inside his mother's womb, Bender and Spink signed the writers the next day.- Richard Brener, an executive at New Line Cinema, was impressed by the duo and enlisted them to draft Final Destination 2; when that film got off the ground with David R. Ellis in the director's chair, New Line circled back to The Blackouts and gave Bress and Gruber the go-ahead to direct.
- The studio considered several high-profile actors, including Tobey Maguire, for the lead role of Evan Treborn, while Bress and Gruber were eyeing a "virtual unknown"; when that unnamed actor suddenly gained notability, the pair lost contact with them.
- Kutcher served as an executive producer on the film, and worked closely with John Patrick Amedori, who portrayed 13 year old Evan, to ensure consistency across their performances; he also studied dissociative disorders in preparation for his role.
SPOILER
Of the four endings filmed, the studio's preference was a "meet cute" between older Evan and Kayleigh, but test audiences reacted strongly towards the ending where Evan travels back to his childhood to sever ties with Kayleigh completely; the studio chose the audience favorite.- Studio notes prompted the filmmakers to drop a "distressing" shot of a dummy burning up on the pavement and a scene where Kutcher's character is sexually assaulted.
