I en ny intervju med Frank Darabont av Nick Schager för Yahoo Movies, förklarar Darabont först sin anledning till att ändra slutet:
When I first read Steve’s [Stephen King] story back a zillion years ago [in 1980’s Dark Forces anthology], I thought, “Wow, that’s a great story,” but I thought that for a movie, it should have a more conclusive sort of feeling.
Han påpekar att själva berättelsen var inspirationen för den:
So I was trying to puzzle through what that conclusive ending would be, and he kind of lays the groundwork for that, actually. There’s a line of the story where he contemplates that eventuality. And I thought, well, that seems like a clear marker for me, that Steve laid in there.
Filmens avslutning passar naturligtvis i en viss tradition:
When that came to me, it just felt like the kind of Twilight Zone ending that really stays with you. You know, “Time Enough at Last” where Burgess Meredith breaks his glasses — that kind of ending, where you’re like “Oh no, if he’d only waited two more minutes!” I liked the horrendous irony of it.
Och det drevs också av Darabonts egna känslor:
At that time, I was feeling a little bit pissed off at the world. There’s definitely a political element to that movie, which you don’t have to look too hard to see. Though it’s not a political movie, it’s in many ways a very political movie. I was feeling a little angry at the world, and at our country at that time [The Mist was released in 2007], so it felt like a valid way to end a movie. It doesn’t always have to be a happy ending. It shouldn’t always be a happy ending. Having grown up in the ’70s, it wasn’t always a happy ending. And I always loved endings like that.
Kommer till svaret på frågan: Darabont frågade kungen för inmatning innan filmen:
But I thought, “OK, I’m going to let Steve decide. If Stephen King reads my script and says, ‘Dude, what are you doing, are you out of your mind? You can’t end my story this way,’ then I would actually not have made the movie.” But he read it and said, “Oh, I love this ending. I wish I’d thought of it.” He said that, once a generation, a movie should come along that just really pisses the audience off, and flips their expectations of a happy ending right on the head. He pointed to the original Night of the Living Dead as one of those endings that just scarred you.