'Sex and the City 3' was set to kill off Mr Big

It looks like the third Sex and the City movie will never see the light of day, but while some cast-members are gutted about that, others… perhaps not so much.

Chris Noth’s character, Carrie’s on-off love interest Mr. Big, was apparently set to be killed off early on into the movie, according to reports.

US podcaster James Andrew Miller has presented an edition of his Origins show featuring input from Sarah Jessica Parker, Noth and other cast-members, which has lifted the lid on the proposed plot in an oral history of the show and its spin-off feature films.

He also suggests that due to the death of Mr. Big – aka John James Preston – the movie would focus more on Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie, implying that Kim Cattrall’s character Samantha wouldn’t have a great deal to do.

Cattrall famously turned down the offer to return for a third film, effectively sealing its fate.

Miller noted: “People close to Kim believe that the script didn’t have a lot to offer the character of Samantha.

“They point to the fact that it calls for Mr. Big to die of a heart attack in the shower, relatively early on in the film, making the remainder of the movie more about how Carrie recovers from Big’s death than about the relationship between the four women.”

Speaking on the podcast, Noth, who recently appeared in an episode of Doctor Who, also went to town on his dislike of the screenplays for the first two movies, saying that he ‘hated’ parts of the ‘cornball’ script, penned by Michael Patrick King.

“I really hate corny stuff and it could be because I’m a little bit of a cynic. Like, the whole thing at the end of the movie in the shoe closet – hated it,” he said, referring to the first film’s final scene.

“Hated the thing at the end of the movie after I felt she deceived me and then I say, ‘Well, it’s time I give you a bigger diamond ring.’ Hated it. I just hate the cornball s**t and I thought it was just really sentimental and overly romantic without any feet in realism.”

On the podcast Willie Garson, the actor who played Stanford Blatch, also spoke about his sadness that there will never be a third film.

“We were supposed to begin filming Oct. 20 last year, so it’s been one year of just, ‘Oh, that didn’t happen.’ And we all wish that this was coming out and it was a gift to be given,” he said.

“This is going to hurt us all, I assume, for years. I know that I’m not over it and, to be honest, it’s a hard thing to be this close to doing something that will not only help yourself and your career and certainly your bank account — as cheesy as that sounds — but that a lot of people really care about. I still don’t know how to process it.”

Perhaps reading the reviews of Sex and the City 2 might help. It was famously hammered by critics, with Mark Kermode calling it a ‘foul, soul-sucking, horrible vacuum of vile emptiness’.

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