Martin Brest was greatly displeased with Columbia Pictures and Revolution Studios reworking the script to cash in on the "Bennifer" craze, and the experience ultimately prompted him to retire from filmmaking entirely after the film bombed.
Ben Affleck does not have fond memories of working on this film. Kevin Smith likes to tell stories about how, whenever he and Affleck are play-fighting with one another, all Smith has to do to end the conversation is say, "Oh, by the way, Gigli." Matt Damon has also joked(?) that Affleck's left eye twitches every time he hears the word "Gigli".
Executive Meddling: The film started out as a straight mob movie. However, Columbia insisted upon changing it once "Bennifer" became the biggest tabloid story of 2002–03.
Romance on the Set: Affleck and Lopez started a well-publicized fling while filming this movie. And said tabloid overkill is certainly one reason audiences didn't give a chloroplast in a fig leaf about it.
Spared by the Cut: In the original cut, Larry shot Det. Jacobellis dead and would bleed to death from a gunshot wound at the end of the film.
Narrowly averted by Ben Affleck, though the combination of this with his roles in Daredevil and Paycheck that same year served to mark the low point of his career prior to his Career Resurrection of the late 2000s, finding major success as a director with Gone Baby Gone and Argo.
Jennifer Lopez's film career suffered due to the film's failure, and while she maintained a successful music and television career, she starred in only a few films in the next decade or so, which were moderate successes at best. However, she enjoyed her own Career Resurrection in 2019 with a critically acclaimed performance in Hustlers.
Troubled Production: The script was rewritten from a straightforward mob movie to a romantic comedy to take advantage of the "Bennifer" media circus surrounding the Romance on the Set between the film's leads, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Director Martin Brest had no problem with this — after all, he'd made Beverly Hills Cop under similar circumstances and it was a hit.note When the script of Beverly Hills Cop was in development with Sylvester Stallone in mind to play Axel, the character of Jenny was supposed to be the Love Interest. After Eddie Murphy was finally cast in the part, Paramount got nervous at the Where da White Women At? implications and mandated Jenny to become Axel's platonic childhood friend. While there were no reports of strife on the set, things blew up between Brest and the studio during post-production, as they fought for a long time over the final film. It was roundlypanned as one of the worst films ever when finally releasednote Let's put it this way. The DVD box had no quotations from reviews on it. None at all. Even most bad movies have at least one blurb from some middle-of-nowhere TV station or newspaper that the studio paid for. The fact that they couldn't even get that says something. and Brest, a fine comic director with Going in Style (1979) and Midnight Run also to his credit, has not made another film since.
Halle Berry was originally cast as Ricki, but dropped out because of her previous commitment to X2: X-Men United.
Adam Brody auditioned for Brian. He liked the original script, especially the ending in which Larry dies and bleeds out on the beach, which he called "a nice image that they did not use in the movie at all" in 2023.
Write What You Know: Martin Brest worked at Bronx State Hospital during college, where he observed the behaviors of various patients. This, he claims, served as the inspiration for the character of Brian.
Gigli won six Golden Raspberry Awards in 2003: Worst Picture, Worst Director and Screenplay for Brest, and Worst Actor, Actress, and Screen Couple for Affleck and Lopez. This makes it the first to "win" all of the equivalent awards to the Oscars' traditional "grand slam".
) and recouping less than a tenth of that — $7,266,209. Notably, its first-to-second-week market share dropped by a whopping 89%.