'Gravity' Almost Included A Love Interest For Sandra Bullock, According to Alfonso Cuaron

The Huge Twist Warner Bros. Wanted For 'Gravity'
NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 03: (EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE) Sandra Bullock attends the USC Shoah Foundation Institute 2013 Ambassadors for Humanity gala at the American Museum of Natural History on October 3, 2013 in New York, New York. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute)
NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 03: (EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE) Sandra Bullock attends the USC Shoah Foundation Institute 2013 Ambassadors for Humanity gala at the American Museum of Natural History on October 3, 2013 in New York, New York. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute)

Warning: some plot spoilers about "Gravity" lie ahead.

"Gravity" director Alfonso Cuaron has already discussed how some "voices" suggested that he change the gender of film's lead character, Dr. Ryan Stone (played by Sandra Bullock), from female to male. In a new interview with Meredith Woerner from io9.com, Cuaron revealed some other ideas pitched to him by studio executives during the film's lengthy development process.

"This is the thing, you will always hear voices. With making a film it's like trying to create a tune in the shower, while you have a hundred people singing around you. You have to focus yourself in on the tune that you're trying to create," Cuaron said, before talking about how some people wanted there to be flashbacks in the film to Stone's daughter, plus extended cutaways to the mission control center back on Earth. "The whole thing of the flashbacks. A whole thing with ... a romantic relationship with the Mission Control Commander, who is in love with her," Cuaron said. "All of that kind of stuff. What else? To finish with a whole rescue helicopter, that would come and rescue her. Stuff like that."

Cuaron has been quite open about "Gravity" during the film's press tour. In an interview with Vulture, he revealed that George Clooney suggested a key scene in the film, where Bullock's Stone sees Clooney's then-deceased Matt Kowalski in a dream, and then prays to Kowalski about her deceased child.

"We were struggling with rewrites, we'd stripped everything, a lot of the dialogue; we knew that anything that was going to be said, it was going to have a lot of weight. There was one scene we were doing over and over and over, and George overheard that we were dealing with that," Cuaron recalled. "And then one night I receive an e-mail from him, saying, I heard you were struggling with this. I took a shot with the scene, Read it. Throw it out. And we ended up using it. This was exactly what we needed."

Speaking with TheWrap, Clooney denied that claim, but then basically corroborated Cuaron's recollection anyway.

"I didn't write any scene. That scene was there from the minute I was handed the script," he said. "The problem they were having was afterward. [...] I said, 'You guys are struggling, here's an idea.' So I wrote out a scene, and there's a portion of it in the movie about Sandy wanting to live. They were struggling with how to tell people she wants to live, and I said, 'Maybe you say she talks to her little girl and says Mommy loves her.'"

For more from Cuaron, head to io9.com.

[via io9]

The Peggy Siegal Company and Warner Brothers Pictures Hosts a Special Lunch Honoring "GRAVITY"

'Gravity' Photos

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot