There’s no chance we’re getting a Sex and the City 3 movie, thanks to Kim Cattrall’s perfectly reasonable decision to lean out of the franchise, but I wish we could—if only because Mr. Big was reportedly going to die in the third installment and that could’ve made for some interesting cinema.
The spoiler detail comes in the third episode of the podcast Origins’ series on Sex and the City, when host James Andrew Miller comments on why Cattrall (who declined to be interviewed for the episode) declined to star in the sequel. Sources “close to Kim believed that the script for the movie didn’t have a lot to offer the character of Samantha,” says Miller. He goes on:
“They point to the fact that it calls for Mr. Big to die of a heart attack—in the shower—relatively early on in the film, making the remainder of the movie more about how Carrie recovers from Big’s death than about the relationship between the four women.”
I can see how that premise would lead to a movie entirely about Carrie, but I think a death like Big’s could have shaken things up in a way we would all appreciate. Not sure I would’ve chosen for him to die of a heart attack in the shower, though.
Had I been consulted, I would’ve suggested that the series needed a big risk and should do the unexpected. (For example, Big simply slips in the shower in a freak accident.) But I wasn’t consulted, and the movie isn’t happening, so I’ll leave it at that.
Given that Miller cited unnamed sources, we don’t know for sure that the plan was to kill off Big. This now belongs to the folklore of the film we’ll never get. The perfect SATC 3, anyway, is the one in my dreams where it’s all about Magda.