The Woman in the Window Director Says Amy Adams Film Was More "Brutal" Before Netflix Release

By Patrick Cavanaugh

Earlier this year, Netflix delivered audiences the true-crime satire The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, but last year saw the streamer delivering audiences the more straightforward thriller The Woman in the Window, with director Joe Wright reflecting on how drastically different the released film was from what he aimed to deliver. Sitting at only 26% positive reviews, to say the film was a disappointment would be a bit of an understatement, with Wright recently reflecting on the more intense narrative he captured and how many overhauls it earned based on executive intervention.

"It was a long, protracted, frustrating experience. The film that was finally released was not the film that I originally made," Wright confirmed to Vulture. "It got watered down a lot. It was a lot more brutal in my original conception. Both aesthetically, with really f-cking hard cuts and really violent music -- Trent Reznor did an incredible score for it that was abrasive and hardcore -- and in its depiction of Anna, Amy Adams's character, who was far messier and kind of despicable in a lot of ways."

In addition to Adams, the film starred Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Fred Hechinger, Wyatt Russell, Brian Tyree Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Julianne Moore. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, the movie focused on alcoholic and agoraphobic Anna believing she witnesses a crime across the street, only for her own mental limitations preventing her from fully investigating what she really saw.

The film was originally developed by 20th Century Fox, with one complication in its release being the studio's acquisition by The Walt Disney Company. The film earned underwhelming test screenings, igniting delays for rewrites and reshoots, before 20th Century Studios ultimately sold the film to Netflix.

"Unfortunately, audiences like women to be nice in their movies," Wright explained of the lackluster reactions to his initial cut. "They don't want to see them get messy and ugly and dark and drunk and taking pills. It's fine for men to be like that, but not for women. So the whole thing was watered down to be something that it wasn't."

Recent years have seen more alternate cuts of films be released on home video, but Wright isn't holding out hope for his original take on the material to see the light of day.

"I think it would cost a lot money to do, because you'd have to re-edit the whole thing, regrade it, remix it. But it would be fun," the director confessed. "I'd love to do it. There's a great scene where she had sex with the bloke downstairs and stuff like that. It was very different. I'm not going to delude myself. It could just be that it was a film that didn't work and that's okay, too. We have a right as artists to fail. We have to keep pushing ourselves. You've got to come in with a fairly decent batting average, but if you don't make the occasional film that doesn't work, then you're not f-cking trying hard enough."

The Woman in the Window is now streaming on Netflix.

Would you like to see Wright's original cut of the film? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

Trending Now: