Michael Douglas remembers late ‘extraordinary talent’ Diane Thomas – Film News | Film-News.co.uk

Michael Douglas has recalled Romancing The Stone author Diane Thomas’s dying.

Throughout an look on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, the Wall Avenue star remembered asking Thomas how he might repay her for unofficially consulting on the script for the Romancing the Stone sequel, The Jewel of the Nile.

“I want a brand new automotive… I might like to get a Porsche,” he recalled her saying, earlier than noting that she later tragically died in that automotive.

“I gave her the keys to the Porsche. And folks can learn the article, however the tragedy is, she killed herself in that Porsche,” he stated. “It wasn’t her driving – her boyfriend was driving – however there’d been some consuming happening, and he had some prison points. We misplaced her at a really – sadly – younger age, and he or she was simply a unprecedented expertise.”

He concluded, “I want – for lots of causes – that she was nonetheless with us, however she’s not.”

Thomas, 39, died on 21 October 1985 after her boyfriend Stephen Norman misplaced management of the car and crashed right into a pole. Norman was convicted of manslaughter within the deaths of Thomas and their good friend Ian Younger and obtained 5 years’ probation.

The Jewel of the Nile was launched six weeks after her dying and he or she obtained a “based mostly on the characters by” credit score.

The Fundamental Intuition actor defined to podcast host Scott Feinberg that Thomas wasn’t free to jot down The Jewel of the Nile as a result of she was beneath contract elsewhere – at Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Leisure.

Nevertheless, she unofficially helped the writers “punch up” the script.

“When it got here near manufacturing, I wanted what’s referred to as a ‘punch up’ – you understand, a bit of assist – and I wished Diane to try it, though she could not actually contractually do something as a result of she was concerned with another initiatives. However she gave me, like, a weekend – an extended weekend, or a couple of days – to form of, do some issues,” he shared.