Fatal Attraction — The series starring Joshua Jackson and Lizzy Caplan comes back to life, premiering April 30 on Paramount+ — Starts at 2205 Clip Diversion, about a runaway one-night stand that writer-director James Dearden fleshes out into a feature film script.
Written and directed by Nicholas Meyer (Writer and Director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), Paramount Producer Stanley R helps. Jaffe and Sherry Lansing are convinced they have a viable erotic thriller on their hands. The screenplay tells the story of Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas), a married New York lawyer who marries Alex Forrest ( Glenn Close), a publishing executive, while his wife Beth (Anne Archer) and daughter are out of town. He was dead wrong. Alex quickly develops a dangerous crush on Dan and the wife who stands in her way. The rest — from Alex’s “I won’t be ignored , Dan” to the boiled pet rabbit — is film history.
“It’s a very good script,” director Adrian Lyne said at 1979 Zhong said, a week before the movie was released. “I’m curious to know what else this woman is going to do, when is the wife going to find out?” When they shot the hot scene that kicks off the episode, there were no intimacy coordinators around.
“I didn’t want to film their sex scene in bed because it was so dull,” Lyne said. “I thought about the sink because I remember I had sex with a girl on the sink once, long ago. The dishes clink and you’ll laugh. You always need a laugh in a sex scene.”
After reworking the original ending – instead of slitting her own throat, Alex brandishes a knife with Dan’s name on it as she emerges from the tub Shot by Beth – The film was released to a huge response, staying at #1 for eight weeks and becoming the 2021 box office hit 2nd Highest Movie (behind Three Men and a Baby ), domestically earning $30 million dollars (26 million today). It was also nominated for six Academy Awards and impressed critics at THR, who called it a “slim, riveting horror-personality movie.”
This story first appeared in the April issue of The Hollywood Reporter Magazine . Click here to subscribe.
