The Little Shop of Horrors work. And they needed something to bridge that moment. They found in the editing room a nice shot of the moon, and they cut it in, and it worked. Twenty years go by. I'm at the studio one day. Chuck comes running up to me, says, 'You've got to see this!' It was a magazine article—eight pages on the symbolism of the moon in "Little Shop of Horrors"." According to Corman, the total budget for the production was $30,000. Other sources estimate the budget to be between $22,000 and $100,000. Corman had initial trouble finding distribution for the film, as
Little Shop of Horrors (film) who turned it down. Barbra Streisand was also rumored to have been offered the part. Since Greene was the original off-Broadway Audrey, the role was given to her. "She's amazing," Oz said. "I couldn't imagine any other Audrey, really. She nailed that part for years off-Broadway." The character of the masochistic dental patient, Arthur Denton, played in the original film by Jack Nicholson under the name "Wilbur Force", and cut from the stage version, was added back to the story and played by Bill Murray, who improvised all of his dialogue. It supposedly took Steve Martin six weeks to film