IT’S a cult classic now, but Ridley Scott says his 1982 flick Blade Runner was initially a “disaster”.

And apparently it was such a disaster that he needed to borrow footage from another famous film to use as his final scene.

The legendary director behind films like The Martian, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down has revealed that a secret friendship with late director Stanley Kubrick helped save his movie.

“I had finished Blade Runner, and it was a disaster,” he told The Hollywood Reporter as part of their roundtable series.

“My investors were giving me a really hard time, saying ‘You can’t end the film with picking up a piece of origami, looking at the girl, walk in the elevator, nod, and bingo that’s it.’ I said, ‘It’s called a film noir.’ And they said, ‘What’s a film noir?’

Blade Runner - Trailer A blade runner must pursue and try to terminate four replicants who stole a ship in space and have returned to Earth to find their creator

“That was a big problem. And he said, ‘We have to test this with an uplifting ending, where they will go off into the wilderness together.’ I said, ‘Well if they go off into a beautiful wilderness, why do they live in this dystopian environment?’”

That’s when he turned to his friend Kubrick, who had released his psychological horror film The Shining a year or two earlier.

“By then I had talked to Stanley [Kubrick] a few times. I said, ‘I know you shot the hell out of The Shining, can I have some of the stuff?’ So at the end of the film in Blade Runner, that’s Stanley Kubrick’s footage.”

Somehow, it fits together seamlessly.