Pretty Woman's original ending was actually really, really dark

We prefer the one where they all lived happily ever after, tbh

Pretty Woman original ending
(Image credit: Rex Features (Shutterstock))

We prefer the one where they all lived happily ever after, tbh

There's no doubt about it that Pretty Woman is one of the most romantic movies of all time, up there with our favourites. It's a film that is stuffed full of iconic moments, from Julia Roberts' character Vivian happily singing away to Prince in the bath, to Vivian showing the shop assistants who's boss, to that sex scene involving a piano.

However, the film's original ending wasn't quite so rosy as the final outcome, and we're not sure what to think – it definitely would not have made our list of the best Pretty Woman moments of all time.

This might be the worst alternate ending you've ever heard, so brace yourselves, people.

The writer behind the 1990 masterpiece, JF Lawton, originally wanted to call the movie 3,000, after the amount of money that Edward pays prostitute Vivian to spend the week with him. It's not got quite the same ring to it, but makes enough sense when you think about it.

But it gets much worse: Julia Roberts has revealed that the lead characters were never going to get together in the original version, telling Matt Lauer in 2015: 'At the end of the original script, Richard [Gere]’s character threw my character out of the car, threw the money on top of her and drove away and the credits rolled.' Yikes.

Talk about dark. All we can say is, we're very glad that it didn't pan out that way, as the film probably wouldn't have gone down in history as one of the best rom-coms ever made. It's just far too miserable an ending for our liking.

Well, we don't know about you, but we much prefer the film's lovely, happy, fuzzy, romantic final ending – which you can watch below to take your mind off the horrible alternative that we just shared with you. You're welcome.

Lucy Abbersteen
Beauty Contributor

Lucy is a freelance beauty editor and contributor at Marie Claire, and has written for titles including Glamour, Refinery29, Popsugar, woman&home and more. She was previously Marie Claire’s junior beauty editor. During her career, she’s covered everything from backstage beauty at fashion week to interviews with famous faces like Drag Race royalty and Little Mix. As for her beauty ethos, she’s a big advocate for not having to spend a fortune on beauty products to get good results, and when she’s not got beauty on the brain you’ll find her reading or hanging out with dogs.