Hit 1987 vampire classic The Lost Boys is a sexy, cool R-rated horror movie, but it was originally planned as a Goonies-style kid adventure. While The Lost Boys is far from a hard-R when it comes to gore or sexual content, it's still definitely a film aimed at adults and older teens. No one would ever mistake it for a family film, but that's almost exactly what it became, at least until a last minute creative change brought on a by a behind the scenes shake-up.
The Lost Boys stars Jason Patric as Michael, a new resident of Santa Carla, California, a locale that happens to be crawling with vampires. After Michael gets seduced by the charms of female vampire Star (Jami Gertz), he finds himself becoming one of the undead, and it'll be up to his brother (Corey Haim) and a pair of comic book obsessed siblings (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander), to try and save him from the darkness. Said darkness personified by vampire group leader David (Kiefer Sutherland).
Of course, that's The Lost Boys we all know after decades of viewings, and new generations of fans being turned on to the sleek hit. The Lost Boys was almost very different, to the point of being unrecognizable.
Why Lost Boys Was Almost Like The Goonies (& Why It Changed)
The Lost Boys was originally set to be directed by Richard Donner, who ended up only executive producing the film instead. Before Donner bowed out as director though, due to other commitments, the plan was to make The Lost Boys similar to 1985 hit The Goonies, which Donner had also directed. While The Lost Boys title is obviously a reference to Peter Pan, the original script by Janice Fischer and James Jeremias was directly inspired by the classic story of a boy who never grew up, but with a vampire twist. The characters were all much younger, and many were named after the characters in Peter Pan. Most amusingly in hindsight, the Frog Brothers were “chubby 8-year-old Cub Scouts," and the Star character was a young boy instead of a love interest.
Thankfully for fans of The Lost Boys as it ended up, the above plan was changed once Joel Schumacher came onboard to direct. Schumacher had no interest in the childhood adventure concept that had been devised, and brought in writer Jeffrey Boam to basically rewrite the whole thing, with very little remaining of the original idea and characters. Schumacher saw the appeal of vampires as being their eternal sexiness, and his primary mission statement to Boam was raising the age of the film's characters, and ratcheting up the sex appeal and adult content factors from nonexistent to heartthrob-worthy. Could The Lost Boys' original concept have worked? Maybe, but it's safe to say Schumacher's demands paid off in the end.