The initial edition of J.F. Lawton’s script was called 3,000, and it was much, much darker, long before Pretty Woman became an instant hit that made Julia Roberts a household name.

Julia Roberts made her name in the hit 1990 romcom, but the actress has spoken up about how the film almost didn’t come out in the same way. In an interview with Patricia Arquette, who auditioned for the film when it was known as 3,000, she disclosed the film’s original ending.

“So many, many, many years ago, one of my early auditions was for a movie called 3,000,” Arquette revealed as part of Variety’s Actors on Actors series. “Most people don’t know that 3,000 was the original Pretty Woman script.”

The original Lawton screenplay had a considerably harsher tone to it, especially the finale, which Roberts described as “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.’

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Arquette recalls, “That movie was really dark and the ending was really heavy. It really read like a dark, gritty art movie.”

After then, Roberts disclosed that the original version was never released because a small film studio “folded”

Roberts said that she “had no business being in a movie like that.” However, the young actress was relieved of her predicament. The initial film business dissolved just days after I got the part. She was jobless until Walt Disney came to her rescue.

“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?'” Roberts joked before revealing how 3,000 transformed into Pretty Woman.

“[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 than what it originally was.”

She added of 3,000: “I couldn’t do it then. I couldn’t do it now. Thank God it fell apart.”

Clearly, Roberts approves of the alterations to the original script, but it’s unclear whether she was involved in them. The original ending would have pushed Roberts in areas she was not comfortable with at the time, but Marshall had a different vision for the picture, which fans are acquainted with today. Of course, Roberts has since shown herself to be a versatile and skilled performer with parts such as Erin Brokovich, for which she earned multiple honors, including an Academy Award for Best Actress.