The Long Kiss Goodnight Turns 30: The Studio Reportedly Wanted Stallone or Seagal. Shane Black Wouldn’t Budge

The early 1990s marked the peak Renny Harlin era, giving us two major box office hits in Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger. Then came Cutthroat Island in 1995, starring his then-wife Geena Davis, a big-budget pirate movie that quickly sank into the bottom of the ocean, even helped sink the once-thriving Carolco Pictures. The following year saw Harlin try to make a $65 million comeback in The Long Kiss Goodnight, which again featured Davis in the lead role, trading from a feisty pirate to a mild-mannered suburban schoolteacher mom, Samantha Caine.

And here’s the twist: she isn’t just a mom who knows how to bake cookies, but also happens to be good with knives… and even an expert in weaponry and hand-to-hand combat since she used to be a deadly CIA assassin. Except that she doesn’t know it due to her memory loss until the past eventually catches up with her. With the help of a private investigator played by Samuel L. Jackson as Mitch Henessey, she soon learns about her true identity and faces a rogue CIA team, led by her former lover Timothy (Craig Bierko), who wants her dead over a cover-up plot eight years earlier.

Shane Black’s Record $4 Million Script Sale for The Long Kiss Goodnight

The Long Kiss Goodnight, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this month, was a high-profile project back in the day. It all started with Shane Black’s (Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout) script, which became a hot commodity that attracted several major studios such as Warner Bros. and Columbia. But it was New Line Cinema that won the bidding war, which ended up paying Shane Black a record-breaking $4 million.

A massive payday that eclipsed Joe Eszterhas, who previously held the record for his whopping $3 million for a script for Basic Instinct. But it came with a cost for Black, who suffered from a backlash among his industry peers, including a scathing Variety column about how he “beat the system”, which was followed by nearly a decade without a produced screenplay until his comeback, albeit a smaller-scale production in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Going back to The Long Kiss Goodnight, Black has long wanted to do a movie that combined pulp and espionage, citing examples like Dirty Harry, Nikita, and James Bond. He then came up with the idea of an amnesiac housewife in the suburbs contrasting with elements of terror and gritty violence. He chose a female protagonist because he loved strong female characters like Modesty Blaise and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.’s April Dancer.

After New Line Cinema bought his script, he rewrote it up to six times, including toning down its initially violent, darker tone to make way for a more mainstream-friendly plot. For instance, Mitch has a bleak backstory revolving around his past being a victim of sexual assault in prison, but in the filmed version, he was rather a disgraced ex-cop from Atlanta who was caught pocketing bonds.

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Why Samuel L. Jackson Wants a Long Kiss Goodnight Sequel

Interestingly, Samuel L. Jackson has an illustrious decades-long career playing memorable roles from philosophical hitman Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction to the cynical everyman Zeus in Die Hard with a Vengeance, stern Jedi master Mace Windu in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, and of course, the no-nonsense Nick Fury in the MCU movies. And yet, according to Jackson himself, he stated that Mitch Henessey is his favorite character, describing him as “kind of whacky, kind of private detective, kind of crazy dude”.

Besides, he wished he could revisit the Mitch Henessey character if there’s a sequel, during a past interview. Even Geena Davis shared the same sentiment in June since she “had so much fun” working with Jackson. Whether the sequel would materialize one day is anyone’s guess, but at one point, Mitch was supposed to die (!) at the end of The Long Kiss Goodnight. However, test audiences weren’t satisfied with the outcome; one of them even screamed, “You can’t kill Sam Jackson!”, which prompted Harlin to reshoot the ending.

Stallone and Seagal Were Reportedly Considered for The Long Kiss Goodnight

Now, considering how Davis and Jackson displayed such a memorable on-screen dynamic in The Long Kiss Goodnight, it’s hard to imagine that New Line Cinema once reportedly considered changing the female protagonist to a male instead. And the studio’s choice would be either Sylvester Stallone or Steven Seagal, but thanks to Shane Black, who pushed back to maintain the gender of the protagonist as intended, citing Nikita as proof a female lead could work, the studio finally agreed to stick to his vision.

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Where to Watch The Long Kiss Goodnight

The Long Kiss Goodnight is available for rent or purchase on Apple TV and Prime Video. The film holds a 67% Tomatometer score and a 71% Popcornmeter score on Rotten Tomatoes.