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23 Fascinating Facts About Some Of 2022’s Biggest Movies
23 Fascinating Facts About Some Of 2022's Biggest Movies,Recurring themes in 2022 movies: Cannibalism, biopics, and <i>Jackass</i>.

23 Fascinating Facts About Some Of 2022’s Biggest Movies

1. Nope director and writer Jordan Peele told Complex that he “basically wrote” the role of Emerald for Keke Palmer. He said, “Yes, I did know off the bat that she was going to be Emerald. In fact, as soon as the character came to me, it was Keke. … She really is that wonderful and that talented.”

Buena Vista Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

…”mind-bending” movies like Groundhog Day and It’s A Wonderful Life

Columbia / courtesy Everett Collection

…and Jackass, which Scheinert noted was “really important.”

Paramount / Courtesy Everett Collection

3. The Woman King director Gina Prince-Bythewood told Polygon that Viola Davis, the film’s star, “wrote a whole notebook of backstory” for her character.

TriStar Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Prince-Bythewood went on, “And while something like that should be for the actor, she did share some with me, and I had the other actors share their backstories.”

TriStar Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

4. Ruben Östlund told Vanity Fair that he was inspired to make Triangle of Sadness, a satire of the rich and inept that kicks off with one character attempting to secure a modeling gig, when he met his wife, a fashion photographer, eight years ago. Östlund said, “I got very curious about her profession because it’s a kind of industry that you have been looking out on from the outside.”

Neon / Courtesy Everett Collection

5. While filming the viking epic The Northman, star Alexander Skarsgård wore just one pair of boots that costume designer Linda Muir repaired with leather as needed, according to the New Yorker. Director Robert Eggers commented, “More impressive than the Vikings doing all the things they did was that they did it in, like, moccasins.”

Focus Features / Courtesy Everett Collection

6. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sandra Bullock initially rejected the lead role in The Lost City, but decided to sign on when the studio agreed to make some alterations to the script. Namely, she requested that her character, a popular romance novelist, become a stronger protagonist, and that her love interest, played by Channing Tatum, was given more traditionally feminine characteristics. Bullock said, “I love that there’s a man in it willing to be many aspects of himself that weren’t traditionally shown in films like this because they had to be the action hero.”

Paramount Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

7. In an interview with Newsweek, Fresh director Mimi Cave said that Sebastian Stan, who plays the charismatic, sociopathic human butcher Steve, emailed her a video of him dancing while holding a knife, just to express his enthusiasm for the part.

Searchlight Pictures / Courtesy Everett Colletion

Cave had already cast him, though Stan didn’t know that yet. She said of the video, which surely would’ve been terrifying in literally any other context, “He was just really wanting to pe into the character already.”

Searchlight Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

8. Speaking of people-eating on the silver screen: In Bones and All, cannibals known as “eaters” roam the country in search of their next gory meal. Star Taylor Russell told Entertainment Weekly that the faux human flesh she and her co-stars ate on-camera was made up of “maraschino cherries and dark chocolate sauce and things like that,” if that reassures any of you audience members with slightly wobblier stomachs.

MGM / Courtesy Everett Collection

9. When asked in an Entertainment Weekly interview about the “most rewarding” scene in Turning Red, writer-director Domee Shi said it was the one where the protagonist, Mei, works on boy band fan art before desperately attempting to hide her sketchbook from her mother, Ming. Shi said, “I knew that she had to go into a passionate, lusty drawing spiral that gets interrupted by her mom. … I definitely had my own secret sketchbook that to this day my mom has never found.”

Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

10. Rian Johnson told Deadline that one of the difficulties of writing Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery was creating a character who was a tech mogul but not specifically based on any one figure from Silicon Valley. Johnson explained, “The fact that Bron’s a tech billionaire — which made a lot of sense for the story — became an obstacle in the writing. Because — I don’t think I even have to say the names — there are some obvious, real-world analogs. And the instant I started thinking about any of them too specifically, it got so boring so quickly.”

Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

11. In an interview with IndieWire, Cate Blanchett shared that her work on Tár, in which she plays a famed conductor, bled into her dreams, and that she “woke up with my hand in the air, moving sound.”

Focus Features / courtesy Everett Collection

12. In The Good Nurse, an overworked nurse named Amy Loughren helps to catch her coworker and friend Charlie Cullen, who is responsible for the death of multiple patients. Incredibly, the movie is based on a true story, and Jessica Chastain, who plays Amy, got the chance to meet the real Amy Loughren, as did Eddie Redmayne, who plays Charlie.

Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Chastain told Collider, “I mean, it’s great to be able to talk to the person that you’re playing, and she was so incredibly generous with me, and what a resource.” She added that while she was “really intimidated” by the presence of Loughren on set, Loughren would “kind of hide” to give Chastain the space she needed to perform without feeling so much pressure.

Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

13. Remember that Taylor Swift meme from way back, where some genius intercut “I Knew You Were Trouble” with footage of a goat screaming? If you don’t, watch this. I’ll wait.


Marvel

14. Chris Evans told Variety that the first time he tried to say Buzz Lightyear’s catchphrase “to infinity, and beyond” for Lightyear, he just did a “shameless Tim Allen impression.” But, despite the “intimidating” task of matching a performance that’s core to a whole lot of childhood memories, Evans said that Pixar was a positive and supportive enough environment for him to discover his own version of Buzz, while “still using Tim Allen as the blueprint.”

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

15. Joseph Kosinski, the director of Top Gun: Maverick, told Collider that the Navy allowed the cast and crew to film “some places that people would never get to see.” However, he recalled, “There were a couple times where I took some pictures that had to be erased off my camera.” Presumably, his Navy tour guides were pretty touchy about the whole military security thing.

Paramount Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

16. None other than acting legend Denzel Washington recommended Austin Butler to Baz Luhrmann for Elvis. Washington acted with Butler in a Broadway production of The Iceman Cometh, and Luhrmann told GQ, “I get a phone call out of the blue from Denzel Washington, who I did not know. Denzel Washington just said, in the most incredibly emotional and direct way, ‘Look, I’ve just been on stage with this young actor. I’m telling you, his work ethic is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen anyone who devotes every single second of their lives to perfecting a role.'”

Warner Bros. / courtesy Everett Collection

Butler told GQ that Washington didn’t tell him about giving this very significant stamp of approval to Luhrmann, and added that he was “so grateful” for “this generous thing” Washington did.

Warner Bros. / courtesy Everett Collection

17. Legendary costume designer Ruth Carter told IndieWire that she and her team “had to start from scratch” in costuming Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, since the costumes from the first film weren’t suitable for use in the underwater settings featured in the sequel.

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Carter said, “We had to start from scratch because the Dora [Milaje] costumes were made from leather and beads, so we remade them with silicone rubber basically.”

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

18. Rachel Wolfson, the first female Jackass cast member, told IndieWire that frontman Johnny Knoxville got her involved in Jackass Forever by reaching out via Instagram, where Wolfson posted comedy content. Wolfson recalled, “As soon as I heard Jackass, I was like, ‘Whatever this is, I want to be a part of it.'”

Paramount / Courtesy Everett Collection

19. In Fire Island, Howie (Bowen Yang) performs Britney Spears’s “Sometimes,” a song that screenwriter and star Joel Kim Booster told Entertainment Tonight was Yang’s own choice. Booster explained that he asked his co-star for a list of potential karaoke options he’d feel good about performing, and “Sometimes” was his “top choice.” They got the rights to the song and shot the scene, which Booster called his “favorite” from the film.

Searchlight Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

20. At one point in The Banshees of Inisherin, Kerry Condon’s unfulfilled character Siobhán says about her fellow residents of a small, sleepy Irish village, “You’re all fucking boring!” Condon told IndieWire that the line was added when she said the same thing to director-writer Martin McDonagh about her co-stars when she spent a weekend without hearing from them. Condon recalled that she said to McDonagh, “I didn’t hear a word from anyone all weekend. I have been on my own; nobody contacted me. You’re all fucking boring!'” McDonagh thought the observation was “in the vein of the character,” so it made it into the movie.

Searchlight Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

21. Steven Spielberg told Time that when his three younger sisters visited the set of his semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, they gifted Michelle Williams, who plays Mitzi, the film’s version of Spielberg’s mother Leah, some of Leah’s actual jewelry to wear during shooting.

Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Spielberg said he’d “never been so nervous” as he was when he showed the film to his sisters. He explained, “We’ve always been close, but this story brought us back together again as if we were all back in Phoenix.”

Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

22. In an interview with Eater, Mark Mylod named a few famed restaurants that Hawthorne, the unsettling culinary destination at the center of his film The Menu, was based on.

Searchlight Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Among them were Noma in Copenhagen…

Thibault Savary / AFP via Getty Images

…The French Laundry in California…

Hoberman Collection / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

…and Alinea in Chicago, amongst others.

Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images

23. And finally: Sarah Polley, the director of Women Talking, told Vanity Fair that Claire Foy performed a single monologue 120 times over the course of two and a half days of shooting.

Orion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Foy wasn’t on-camera for every take, since the crew needed to capture both her performance and the reactions of the other members of the cast. Polley said this method “wasn’t humane,” but Foy added that they soon figured out a schedule that meant performers could be “fresh” before shooting an emotional scene.

Orion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

In the same interview, Rooney Mara said that she actually snuck a fart machine onto set following Foy’s marathon performance, because, “After doing that scene 120 times, I was like, ‘How are we supposed to laugh?'” Apparently, a fart machine did the trick.

Orion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection