Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman was originally meant to die of a drug overdose.
Former Disney studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg has revealed they were “debating” killing off Vivian Ward – a prostitute who falls in love with wealthy business dealer Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) – in the classic romantic comedy from 1990 played by the 49-year-old beauty.
According to the New York Post’s Page Six column, Katzenberg told an audience at a Q&A at Hearst Tower in New York: “I can’t tell you how much time was spent debating.”
The 66-year-old film executive said that the movie was planned to be a lot darker than it was in the end and that the reason it ended up being light-hearted was because they had a hard time “convincing” the Walt Disney Company to make it less of a “princess movie”.
He added: “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. 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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