WWE: Escape The Undertaker Director Says Final Fight Between Undertaker and The New Day Lost ‘Some Great Moments’

Escape The Undertaker, WWE and Netflix’s new interactive film, dropped last month featuring the iconic “Deadman” and Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods and Big E of The New Day. The film’s climax, regardless of the choices the viewer make throughout the film, sees the trio try and battle the Undertaker in the basement of his mansion over control of his mystical Urn. But aside from a few punches and the usage of a metal chain, there’s not much in terms of a fight scene before the viewer is given their final choice to end the movie. In a new interview with Coming Soon, the film’s director Ben Simms admitted that a lot of that final fight wound up on the cutting room floor. 

“I really enjoyed choreographing and shooting the fight scene,” Simms said. “Having characters that are essentially their own stunt doubles was such a luxury. We had an incredible stunt team working in conjunction with the performers that knew their capabilities and how to push those. As a result of the timing between choices and the age demographic, we ended up really having to tone down some of the fight and lost some great moments to time… Hopefully, someday there will be a version of the full sequence.”

He also noted the short amount of time the movie was given for filming. Big E confirmed in a separate interview with ComicBook when the movie was released that the wrestlers filmed everything in just a few days. 

“For a number of reasons, we were under a very tight timeline,” Simms said. “Luckily the talent are all live performers so that was a huge plus. Our incredible crew was able to build and light every scene so we could essentially shoot almost as if it was a live show, yet still maintain high production value as well as the look and feel of a movie. In any production, you’ll always have budget and timeline challenges, but this was easily the fastest I’ve shot anything of scope.”

During that aforementioned interview with ComicBook, E talked about how much fun he had getting to work on set with “The Phenom.”

It was great. So, the nice thing is, as much as he’s in many ways from a different era, even though he’s done stuff recently, he’s been around enough that we have a bit of a rapport with Taker. His daughters have been New Day fans for a while and they do unicorn theme stuff and he shared that, and it’s been very, very sweet. So yeah, just being able to be there with Undertaker, and we would sit sometimes while we’re all eating and hear some of his stories,” E said. “It’s just really cool because I remember, and this is not to age him, but I used to watch the Undertaker when I was a small kid. I am 35 now. He’s been around for a very, very long time, and it’s just cool to have a living legend amongst your presence, just shooting takes with you and eating catering. So, it was a good time.