Ever since Oprah started talking about The Sex And The City Movie last week, our friend Emily (who gave her honest reactions to the SATC trailer) has been occasionally piping up with “Mayyy Thirrrrrtieth!” in Oprah rising excitement voice during normal SATC conversations.

But we haven’t talked about the big rumor going around, that the Movie will involve the death of Carrie’s series-long love Mr. Big.

You’d be surprised how much steam this rumor has gained in the past few weeks. Enough steam that someone finally approached director Michael Patrick King, asking nicely if he was planning to kill off Chris Noth’s Big man.

From AP, who managed to corner King:

“Kill Mr. Big? I would have been chased around the planet by women with torches,” said King, who also wrote the film and produced it along with its star, Sarah Jessica Parker.
Actually, the idea of a Mr. Big death was pitched to King early on, the director said in an interview. And it’s true, he was aiming for some edge and pathos and melodrama in his script.
Just not that much edge, pathos or melodrama.
“I did want an emotional roller-coaster,” King said. “But my ultimate target was to make our ‘girlfriends’ — in other words, our audience — happy. And I don’t think Mr. Big dying would make them happy.”
The death rumor has led to some naughty speculation. One of the naughtiest: New York Magazine suggested that Charlotte, the pretty and perky Park Avenue socialite, could be killed in a freak tennis accident.
So does anybody die? No plot spoilers here. But King, whose movie opens in late May, offered this answer.
“It’s a summer movie,” he said. “Why would I want to kill anyone?”

Good thing making the fans happy is the number one priority, because if the choice comes down to seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for the fourth time or watching Sex and the City for the first, we’re still siding with Indy.

The fans of SATC are going to need to keep this series of movies afloat on their own, which shouldn’t be a problem.