Sharon Stone eventually got the part alongside Douglas after a successful screen test. Interestingly, Ryan eventually did star in a movie that subverted her America’s sweetheart persona and featured a lot of simulated sex and nudity, In the Cut (2003), which despite her excellent performance did indeed derail her career. Greta Scaachi, Julia Roberts, Michelle Pfeiffer, Geena Davis, Kathleen Turner, Ellen Barkin, and Meg Ryan also turned down offers to co-star alongside Douglas, perhaps sensing the role had the potential to backfire and destroy their careers. Michael Douglas was attracted to the project and suggested Kim Basinger ( Batman) to play femme fatale Catherine Tramell, but she refused the offer.

However, he soon admitted his changes weren’t improvements and agreed to shoot Eszterhas’s original screenplay.

Paul Verhoeven was immediately interested in directing it, but he wanted to add a lesbian sex scene described by Eszterhas as “exploitative”, so Verhoeven asked for rewrites to be carried out by Gary Goldman ( Big Trouble in Little China), whom he’d just worked with on Total Recall.

Joe Eszterhas wrote Basic Instinct in only a few weeks, then Carolco Pictures bought it for an incredible $3M. Basic Instinct may have been a major studio release with Hollywood royalty Michael Douglas given top billing, but Verhoeven’s involvement ensured it competed with its direct-to-video rivals by mixing high production values and star-power with boundary-pushing sex and nudity for a mainstream release. It was the perfect marriage between director and material, as the Dutch filmmaker’s foreign sensibilities had already transformed US sci-fi action with RoboCop (1987) and added welcome bite to Total Recall (1990). Whatever happened to the erotic thriller? Once a staple of 1980s and 1990s cinema, the genre arguably reached its peak with Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct.

Basic instinct leg cross scene xxx