Why change the ending? *Spoilers*

Maybe there were keeping in mind what happened with Jaws, with Hooper dying in the book, but in the movie he escapes from the shark cage and rises up to greet Brody, garnering huge audience applause (that change happened because of great technical difficulties in shooting & matching the stuntman footage with the real life shark footage shot by Ron & Valerie Taylor. They got footage of the shark getting entangled with the cage & cables and sinking down with it; it looked so dramatic the producers kept it in and changed Hooper's fate.) So maybe they wanted that similar effect of having Treece surface with the treasure and tossing it to David, to get applause from the audience as the movie ended. I would assume audiences liked Treece the most of any of the main characters.


"Everyone else may be an a**hole, but I'm not!" - Harlan Ellison

It's the typical Hollywood happy ending. They want the audience to feel happy on their way out. I prefer the other ending. When I saw the film, I was struck by the absurdity and suddenness of the scene. It wasn't credible or necessary.