There’s a serial killer operating in North Carolina, abducting women and holding them captive in an underground lair. Thankfully, one of the most popular literary characters of the last thirty years is on the case. But was the right actor cast in the role for the film adaptation? Which cast member might question your taste if you enjoyed the movie? And what sort of changes were made as the story moved from page to screen? Let’s dig in and find out what happened to Kiss the Girls.
The Rise of Alex Cross
Author James Patterson has written more than two hundred novels since his debut in 1976, but the most successful stretch of his career began in 1993. That’s when Along Came a Spider introduced readers to Alex Cross, an African-American detective for the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. The book launched a franchise that now spans more than thirty novels.
Interestingly, the first film adaptation wasn’t based on that debut novel. Instead, Cross made his screen debut in 1997 with Kiss the Girls, adapted from the second book in the series, published in 1995.
The Case of Two Killers
The first book saw Cross getting mixed up in a kidnap-for-ransom case. The events of Kiss the Girls are also kicked off by an abduction, but this is a very different situation. Cross learns that his niece Naomi has been abducted by a serial killer in North Carolina who calls himself Casanova. He believes he is a great lover of women, but in reality, he keeps multiple victims imprisoned in an underground lair. When he loses interest, he murders them in the woods.
Cross heads to North Carolina to join the investigation. Around the same time, another victim is taken: Dr. Kate McTiernan, a physician who also trains in kickboxing. Kate manages to escape in a standout sequence, plunging through a waterfall into the river below. However, she cannot locate the killer’s lair, leaving authorities without a clear lead.
Still, she becomes a key part of the investigation, forming a bond with Cross and even traveling with him to California, where a shocking revelation emerges: there’s another killer. Known as the Gentleman Caller, he communicates with Casanova, and the two share details of their crimes.
Bringing Kiss the Girls to the Screen
Rysher Entertainment and Paramount Pictures quickly acquired the Kiss the Girls film adaptation rights. Patterson’s fellow author David Klass was hired to write the script, making his screenwriting debut.
Director Gary Fleder was hired after his first film, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, gained attention despite underperforming at the box office.
Casting Alex Cross
In the novel, Cross is a widower in his late thirties raising two young children with his grandmother. When it came time to cast the character, you could imagine that popular names like Will Smith or Wesley Snipes could have been floated around. They would have been just about the perfect age. Or they could go with Denzel Washington, a few years older.
Instead, the role went to Morgan Freeman, who turned sixty the same year the film was released. He was a couple decades too old to be playing Alex Cross… but really, age be damned. If you have the chance to cast Freeman as the intelligent, empathetic lead character in your ‘90s thriller, you cast him.
He was fresh off working on another serial killer thriller, Seven, when he reported to the set of this production. Some viewers have annoyed him by claiming he was basically just playing his Seven character all over again here. Freeman said if that was true, then he had bottomed out as an actor. He didn’t intend for them to be similar, aside from their occupations, and the two do have very different demeanors.
A Strong Supporting Cast
The film assembled an impressive ensemble:
- Ashley Judd as Kate McTiernan
- Tony Goldwyn, who has a great voice for narration, as the Gentleman Caller
- Cary Elwes and Alex McArthur as police officers Cross works with in North Carolina
- Bill Nunn as Cross’s best friend Sampson
- Brian Cox as a police chief
- Jeremy Piven in a small role as a California cop
- William Converse-Roberts as a suspicious professor
- Gina Ravera as Cross’s niece
- Richard T. Jones as the niece’s boyfriend.
- Jay O. Sanders as FBI agent Kyle Craig – a recurring character in the novels who turns out to be a very bad guy and, ultimately, Cross’s arch-nemesis.
Judd turns in a great performance. At the time of the film’s release, she proudly promoted it as an old-fashioned thriller, and was happy to hear when viewers were scared by it, or when the events on the screen sent a chill through them. She just doesn’t want viewers to enjoy the movie too much – and these days, she might question any fans who cross paths with her.
In a 2026 interview with The Independent, she said, “Today when people say, ‘Kiss the Girls is my favorite movie,’ I’m like, ‘Let’s talk about that,’ because male sexual violence and male torture of women is not entertainment, and that’s what that movie is about.”
It’s certainly not nice to see what happens to the female victims in this film, but viewers shouldn’t have their taste questioned just because they enjoy a good, old-fashioned thriller. Kiss the Girls is a well-crafted movie and the mystery of the killers’ identities plays out in an intriguing way. That’s what’s entertaining about it. And in the end, you get to see the bad guys receive comeuppance for what they’ve done.
Changes from Book to Movie
We should note that the filmmakers did cut back on the violence while making their adaptation. Much worse and more repulsive things happen in the novel than happen in the movie. If you haven’t read the book and want to know how much worse things were in there… well, just find someone who has read it and ask them about the scene involving warm milk and a snake. Actually, you’re better off if you don’t know what happens in that scene. Protect yourself and avoid that information.
The violence wasn’t the only thing that was pared down. Adapting a 450+ page novel required significant changes. Some of the biggest differences include:
- Cross’s children and grandmother were removed… which makes sense, since Freeman was sixty years old.
- In the book, there was a newspaper journalist who was publishing letters sent in by the Gentleman Caller. She was removed, along with her murder – a murder that was attributed to Kyle Craig in later books.
- Cross and Kate bond in the film, but not as deeply as the characters do in the book, where they fall for each other and have a romantic fling.
There was one violent sequence that was enhanced for the screen: the ending. The final confrontation with Casanova was fairly underwhelming on the page. The CEO of Paramount, Sherry Lansing, called for a more intense and violent climax. She got it – and it’s pretty cool. If the book ruined the reputation of milk in your mind, the ending of the movie will redeem it for you.
Production and Behind-the-Scenes Tension
Kiss the Girls was filmed in North Carolina and California from April to July 1996. The production itself appears to have been relatively smooth, though there were some tensions behind the scenes.
During a Q&A a few years after the film’s release, Freeman said, “Gary Fleder is a young man but he has a real flair for making movies. I like working with directors because I’m really opinionated about what things work and may not work. I like to be able to say them and then have them acted on. The director who responds to me like that always gets my appreciation. What I find is the best directors, no matter what kind of name they have, are like that.” The implication being that Fleder didn’t act on his suggestions.
Patterson also said he had a disappointing experience when he visited the set, as no one seemed to care that the author was around and didn’t understand why he would be.
Box Office and Critical Reception
Kiss the Girls reached theatres more than a year after filming had wrapped. Following a festival premiere in September of 1997, it was given a wide release in October, and it did reasonably well. Made on a budget of $27 million, it earned more than 60 million at the domestic box office.
Critics were mixed on it. The Washington Post acknowledged it as “a tense, scary, perversely creepy thriller” and many reviewers praised the acting of Freeman and Judd, including Roger Ebert. But others felt that it was too long at just under two hours, the plot twists too confusing, and that it was too generic or clunky; a thriller operating on automatic pilot.
The Alex Cross Legacy on Screen
Kiss the Girls didn’t launch a long-running film franchise, but it did lead to a sequel. In 2001, Freeman returned to the role of Alex Cross in Along Came a Spider – and was probably glad that Fleder didn’t direct that one. The movie was made on twice the budget, but also did better at the box office. It’s surprising that Paramount didn’t keep pumping out Cross sequels with Freeman, but it was only a two-film run for him.
In 2012, Lionsgate released another Cross movie, Alex Cross, with Tyler Perry taking on the title role. That one was a box office disappointment.
As of 2024, the character moved to television, with Aldis Hodge playing him in a Prime Video series called Cross. It stars Patterson’s character, but that show isn’t a direct adaptation of any of the books, even though the makers had more than thirty to choose from.
Does Kiss the Girls Still Hold Up?
And that’s what happened to Kiss the Girls, along with its main character. The movie may have faded into the background of other ‘90s thrillers that it was compared to, like The Silence of the Lambs and Seven… but if you revisit it, you’ll find that it still holds up more than thirty years later. Ashley Judd soured on it over the decades, but it’s still a good, old-fashioned thriller, just like she promised it would be in ‘97.
A couple of previous episodes of this show can be seen below. For more, check out the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel—and don’t forget to subscribe!
The comment section exists to allow readers to discuss the article constructively and respectfully, focused on the topic at hand.
What’s Not Allowed