Trivia / Boxing Helena

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $2 million. Box office, $1,796,389. This KO'd Jennifer Lynch's cinematic career immediately, and she didn't make another movie for 15 years.
• Creator Killer: The careers of Lynch and Helena's actress Sherilyn Fenn were destroyed thanks to this film; however, they would eventually find their way back into work years later. Both of them have gone on record stating that they don't regret the project, and are both proud of how they worked together.
• Direct to Video: The film was never released theatrically in the UK when first released and went straight to video.
• Star-Derailing Role:
  • Kim Basinger was sued into bankruptcy for breach of contract when she backed out of the lead role eventually given to Fenn. The double-whammy of this and Cool World (which also included a lot of well-publicized director-wagging) put her career on ice for a while, making this a rare instance of an actor losing their star status for not being in a movie. Despite this, it's generally agreed it did less damage than if she had appeared in the film.
  • It didn't fulfill Sherilyn Fenn's hopes of turning her Twin Peaks success into a film career, either.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Kim Basinger, who was originally cast as Helena, dropped out of the movie. The studio sued her over breach of contract, which eventually led her to go bankrupt. This was, incidentally, why Whoopi Goldberg wound up starring in Theodore Rex — she'd seen what happened to Basinger when she tried to get out of a box office bomb, and didn't want to suffer the same fate.
  • Madonna was originally going to play the lead. At that time, the project was titled Boxing Hanna.
  • Ed Harris and John Malkovich were offered the lead role of Dr. Nick Cavanaugh.

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