10 Movies Which Were Completely Changed After Test Screenings

7. Pretty Woman

After her breakthrough in Steel Magnolias, Julia Roberts was catapulted into the ranks of the A-listers and crowned Queen of the Rom-Com thanks to Pretty Woman, in which she played the "hooker with a heart of gold" wooed by Richard Gere's raunchy millionaire. While the rom-com approach worked wonders at the box office, it was a far cry from the original concept - pitched more like a Paul Schrader movie of the era it was intended to be a gritty examination of the life of a sex worker, with the movie ending with Gere's character unceremoniously kicking Roberts's hooker out of the car, after which she returns to her life of prostitution - not to mention her drug addiction. Test screenings soon put an end to the idea of Pretty Woman operating on any level of social awareness and the studio bowed to the whims of the audience and dropped the drug addiction and downbeat ending entirely. Fortunately for them, they'd already got the director to shoot an alternative fairly tale ending, although viewed through today's prism of gender politics and feminism you could argue that this ending is more controversial than intended.