Why did they have the boy die in the book Cujo, but not in the movie?

Answer 1

my first and best guess is that killing off a child in that era of filmaking was not the fashionable thing to do. of course nowadays damn near anything goes. I have one for you:
in Jurassic park they show a man getting plucked off a toilet by a T-Rex. In a sequel however, the could not show a dog getting snatched up. I mean you know what happened ya just didnt get to see it actually happening.

Answer 2

'They' would be Stephen King, who wrote the book. And like someone above me says, when it was made into a movie it was decided by the producers not to kill the boy. The main reason for this was the fact that Dee Wallace (the mother) had just come off the blockbuster 'ET The Extra Terrestrial' and many people still saw her as Elliot's mom and it would've been cruel to the audience to put her through losing a child in such a violent way. When they made Stephen King's Pet Semetary, though, they decided to kill the boy in that movie. Go figure. :-) The mother in Pet Sem. was a Dee Wallace look-alike too...lol The 'mom' Dee Wallace played in Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, died in an attempt to save her baby from being kidnapped by Pluto and family. She died and the baby was kidnapped, and almost eaten...lol Then she almost loses a child in ET, then almost loses a child in 'Cujo'. She did meet her husband Christopher Stone while making Cujo. He played the guy she was having an affair with. She changed her name to Dee Wallace Stone for future movies, until his untimely death 18 years later, when she changed her name back. Sorry I got way side-tracked here. I never knew the boy was killed off in the book though. Now I 'really' want to see this remade if they'll stick more closely to the book. Besides, that kid that played her son in Cujo went on to play the son on 'Who's The Boss?' It would've been cool seeing him eaten by a big dog...lol

Answer 3

The 80's tended to be kind of feel good. They never showed anything bad. I don't think they wanted to show a blue-eyed blond imp getting offed by a rabid dog. Even now the realism of sex/violence to children is not acceptable. The most recent flack is Daniel Radcliff playing a stage role requiring him to be nude at 17(in the minds of many, making him a bad role model) and Dakota Fanning playing a rape victim at 13 (people now say her parents are nuts for letting her take the role). It goes back to the 70's when Brooke Shields and Jodi Foster played child prostitutes. Things happen in real life but it is horrible to show it on film. It's okay to 'say' something bad happened, but you can never actually film the scenes, as people will react badly.

Answer 4

You can write about anything you want in a book, however, as most people know, the movies are almost never like the books.