Trivia / Rose Red

• Hide Your Pregnancy: Near the end of shooting, the director realized that Joyce was nowhere to be seen during the whole last section of part two. Aside from this being a big Plot Hole, it also would have made her change from only slightly unhinged and obsessed to outright Laughing Mad and Ax-Crazy much more jarring. But when they wanted to film some new segments to be inserted during the arrival of Professor Miller and Mrs. Waterman, as well as Vic's death, Nancy Travis was very visibly pregnant. Cue a double, a big sweater and extreme close-ups.
• Romance on the Set: Melanie Lynskey (Rachel) and Jimmi Simpson (Bollinger) began dating while working on the mini-series. They married five years later, but filed for divorce five years after that.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally the scene with Sukeena leading Professor Miller off into the overgrown grounds was supposed to culminate with her exploding into a flock of Creepy Crows, which would then have either consumed Miller or carried him off. Considering some of the other Special Effects Failures in the film, it may be just as well this didn't happen, but if it had been done right, it would have been quite creepy and disturbing, certainly more so than the random Big-Lipped Alligator Moment of the windstorm blowing around the tree which was used instead. Unfortunately, perhaps, this wasn't possible to film properly (see Real Life Writes the Plot).
  • The "Making Of" featurette, when showing behind-the-scenes footage of the various undead "ghost" puppets, not only includes a scene of April attempting to stab someone with a knife, but reveals there had been a "zombie-face" version of Joyce created. This implies that, contrary to the filmed ending, Joyce had been originally intended to be absorbed by the house and then used to terrorize someone else. Steve? Annie? Professor Miller?
  • On a related note, David Dukes's untimely death and the expansion of the role of Mrs. Waterman to replace him suggests that perhaps the original intention had been for it to be Miller that Sukeena's ghost would drag into the wine cellar (fitting, considering she was the one who lured him out onto the grounds). What would have occurred after this can only be speculated, but it's entirely possible he might have been intended to haunt Joyce and perhaps provide further justification for her Sanity Slippage, or even pull her into the mirror (instead of Emery and his mother) or keep her from leaving the house until it was too late.
  • This was originally intended to be an adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House with Steven Spielberg set to direct. However, King left due to creative differences and wrote this script instead.
  • Originally, King wanted the Barbra Streisand version of "Somewhere (There's a Place for Us)" from West Side Story to be the musical theme for the miniseries. But when Streisand wanted an exorbitant sum of money to even speak to the producers, let alone allow her song to be used, they decided to go with the Theme from "A Summer Place" instead.