Pretty Woman's shockingly dark plot twist revealed

It's the romantic comedy that helped propel Julia Roberts and Richard Gere to super-stardom and made viewers everywhere believe in fairy tale endings.

But Pretty Woman could have been a much darker tale, according to former Disney studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg, talking at a Hearst Tower Q&A in New York, the Daily Mail reports.

"As a script, Pretty Woman was an R-rated movie about a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard," Page Six reported.

"By the way, in the original version - it's pretty dark - I think she died of an overdose.

Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in the 1990 film Pretty Woman.

"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."

Julia Roberts' 1990 film Pretty Woman originally had a much darker ending, it has been revealed.

Starring Richard Gere as a wealthy businessman and Julia Roberts as a hooker who fall in love against all the odds, it was released in 1990.

It became a huge hit, making US$463 million worldwide at the time and countless more money since, a healthy return on its reported US$14 million budget.

Julia Roberts in the 1990 film Pretty Woman.

- Daily Mail