Richard…. how could you.
It’s one of the most popular rom-coms of all time but it turns out Pretty Woman was almost a totally different flick.
The goss comes from actress Patricia Arquette who was up for the role of Vivian back when it was called 3000 – a reference to how much money Richard pays Vivian for a week of her time. Patricia and Julia Roberts herself sit down to discuss the movie’s origins for Variety’s Actors on Actors series.
The Medium and Escape From Danemoraactress explained that most people would be surprised to know that not only did the film have a more abrupt title, but that the ending was “pretty heavy”.
“[Edward] threw her out of the car, threw the money on top of her, as memory serves, and just drove away, leaving her in some dirty alley,” Julia replied simply. “Right. So it really read like a gritty art movie. When you first read it, it was that incarnation,” Arquette added.
The pair go on to explain that even though Julia was eventually cast, the production company went bust “and by Monday, I didn’t have a job”.
“There was one producer that stayed with the script, and it went to Disney. I thought, ‘Went to Disney? Are they going to animate it?’” Julia said. “[Director] Garry Marshall came on, and because he’s a great human being, he felt it would only be fair to meet me, since I had this job for three days and lost it. “And they changed the whole thing. And it became more something that is in my wheelhouse.”
Former Disney studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg spoke has also talked about the original ending for the film in 2017.
“As a script, Pretty Woman was an R-rated movie about a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard. By the way, in the original version — it’s pretty dark — I think she died of an overdose,” he said at the time. “So convincing (people) that we should make that at the Walt Disney Co, and that it’s a fairy tale and a princess movie, a lot of people had a hard time seeing it. But, as they say, the rest is history.”
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Images: Pretty Woman / Disney
By Ally Parker
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