Director Guillermo del Toro disowned the film after constant clashes with Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein. The latter complained that early footage of the film wasn't scary enough, and would frequently visit the set to make unreasonable demands about what should be shot, deviating away from the script. When that did not solve the matter, Weinstein threatened to fire del Toro and replace him with another director. However, del Toro was saved by the intervention of Mira Sorvino, who was a recent Oscar winner for Mighty Aphrodite (1995) (produced by Weinstein's company Miramax). She threatened to quit the film if del Toro's vision wasn't respected, and she received support from her then-boyfriend Quentin Tarantino, who has made several films for Miramax. The Weinsteins finally agreed to let del Toro stay on, but they oversaw the final cut of the film. Since then, del Toro has never worked with the Weinsteins again, but he made his peace with the film after creating a Director's Cut that was closer to his vision.
Part of Guillermo del Toro's unhappiness with the theatrical version of the movie came from the fact that it contained a lot of shots filmed by the second unit crew, which he found inconsistent with his use of colors and camera set-up. He re-edited the film into a Director's cut that was closer to his original vision, stating that if viewers are still unhappy with this version, then at least he is entirely to blame.
Due to the heavy-handed post-production influence of Harvey Weinstein, this film appears on a 2017 list in The Telegraph entitled "Harvey Scissorhands: 6 films ruined by Harvey Weinstein."
According to Guillermo del Toro, Mira Sorvino and Jeremy Northam could not stand each other on set.
The horrible treatment of director Guillermo del Toro by producers Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein on this film almost led to a physical altercation between the latter and director James Cameron. The two met during the 1998 Academy Award ceremony where Cameron won the Best Director Oscar for Titanic (1997): "Harvey came up glad-handing me, talking about how great they were for the artist, and I just read him chapter and verse about how great I thought he was for the artist based on my friend [del Toro]'s experience, and that led to an altercation." Cameron claims that he nearly hit Weinstein with his Oscar statue before they were ushered back into their seats.
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