In 1975 Al Pacino was offered the role of Han Solo in the film Star Wars, but he refused the role because “The script was too confusing”.
films
40 years before James Cameron’s…
40 years before James Cameron’s “Avatar” was released, the “Noon Universe” Russian sci-fi novels were published, set on a forest planet called Pandora in the 22nd century, inhabited by humanoids called Nave (compared to the “Na’vi” in Avatar).
Die Hard was a sequel to…
Die Hard was a sequel to the 1968 movie “The Detective” starring Frank Sinatra. As such, 20th Century Fox were contractually obliged to offer Sinatra the leading role. He turned it down due to his age.
Although it is commonly shown…
Although it is commonly shown in medical dramas, you do not shock someone with a flatline. You only use defibrillators on people with ventricular fibrillation, and pulseless ventricular tachycardia (heart beats out of rhythm or heart beats that are really fast and out of sync).
Francis Coppola was worried…
Francis Coppola was worried his film Apocalypse Now would be a box office flop and could bankrupt him, so he decided to quickly make a happy musical to recoup his losses. In the end Apocalypse Now was a success, but the happy musical (One From the Heart) was a disaster and bankrupted him anyway.
The movie “Paranormal Activity”…
The movie “Paranormal Activity” had a budget of only $15,000 but made $194 million. During the screening, people were walking out that one studio executive thought the film was bombing. They later learned that the viewers were actually leaving because they were too frightened.
In Back to the Future, the origina…
In Back to the Future, the original idea was for the time machine to be a refrigerator, but because Robert Zemeckis was afraid that kids would imitate the film and get trapped in fridges, they changed it to a DeLorean car.
The term “Napoleon Dynamite Problem”…
The term “Napoleon Dynamite Problem” is used to describe the phenomenon where “quirky” films such as Napoleon Dynamite, Lost in Translation and I Heart Huckabees prove difficult for researchers to create algorithms able to predict whether or not a viewer will like a certain film.
The software to create…
The software to create the black hole in the movie ‘Interstellar’ is a full implementation of Einstein’s equations in 40,000 lines of C++, and rendered thousands of 23-megapixel IMAX frames on a 32,000-core render farm at about 20 core-hours per frame.
While filming Pirates of the Caribbean…
While filming Pirates of the Caribbean in London, Johnny Depp received a letter from a local 9 year old girl, who asked for help with “munity” against her teachers. Depp turned up with no warning at the school in full Jack Sparrow outfit, but advised against munity.