Maggie Gyllenhaal removed some violence from The Bride! after studio feedback

Maggie Gyllenhaal dialled back some of the violence in her new movie The Bride! at the request of the studio.

The actress-turned-director's latest film stars Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley as Frankenstein and his Bride, who embark on a violent lovers-on-the-run-style crime spree in 1930s Chicago.

Gyllenhaal revealed on The New York Times' The Interview podcast that the movie was screened for test audiences who gave them feedback on the level of violence.

"Because it's a big studio movie, we tested and tested it," Gyllenhaal said. "We had big screenings in malls, where people came to see it, which I had never been a part of as an actress or a director before. So fascinating. And one of the things that they brought up was the violence: Is it too violent? And I was talking about it with a girlfriend of mine, who said - and she wasn't being reductive - 'I wonder if you had been a man making this movie, if you would have had the same response.'"

Following the feedback, Warner Bros. executives asked The Lost Daughter filmmaker "to take some" of the violence out, so the final cut is "a little bit pulled back from what was originally in the movie".

Gyllenhaal also received another note from Pamela Abdy, who runs Warner Bros., with her recalling, "'Maggie, you cannot have Frankenstein lick black vomit off the Bride's neck. It's just too much. You can't do it.' But she understood why I wanted it."

The Secretary actress explained that she made sure every single death "has a consequence and a cost" so the violence doesn't feel gratuitous.

As for the sexual violence, which she has been "taken to task for", Gyllenhaal wanted to show it in her film because she thinks "wildly disturbing brutality against women" is an unfortunate but "major reality" in the world we're living in.

"And so if we're going to see it, we need to see it in a way that is very hard to watch, because it is very awful," she added.

The Bride! marks Gyllenhaal's first foray into studio filmmaking after her 2021 independent film The Lost Daughter. Of the process, she admitted that having studio intervention "was difficult, but not in a bad way. It was just very new for me."

The movie will be released in cinemas on Friday.