* ActorSharedBackground: Eva Perón lived most of her life in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her actress for the 2006 London/2012 Broadway revivals, Elena Roger, also hails from Buenos Aires.
* CaliforniaDoubling: Most of the film was shot in Hungary, which resembled Buenos Aires during the film’s time period. Averted with "Don't Cry For Me Argentina", which was filmed on the balcony of the actual Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires.
* DawsonCasting:
** In Eva's first appearance, she is 15 years old; she ages 18 years over the course of the show, dying at age 33. Most actresses who play the role are in their 30s. Tina Arena, who starred in the 2018 Australian revival, was 50 at the time.
** Likewise for Peron's mistress, who's supposed to be a teenager but usually played by actresses in their 20s, [[{{Squick}} for obvious reasons]].
** For the film, Madonna was 37, playing Eva from ages 15 to 33 (although she’d been in consideration for the role for a decade by the time it was finally filmed).
* DisownedAdaptation: Creator/PattiLuPone, the original Broadway Eva, never saw the entire film but disliked the songs and scenes she did experience, especially the lowered keys to accommodate Madonna’s vocal range. [=LuPone=] has subsequently called Madonna a fine performer in her own right but a “movie killer.”
* ExtremelyLengthyCreation: The film version started development before a fully staged version of the musical even premiered. It was finally released in 1996, a full twenty years after the original concept album and eighteen years after the world premiere of the stage version.
* FakeNationality: None of the main actors in the 1996 film are Argentinians, despite the film taking place there. Music/{{Madonna}} (Eva Perón), Creator/OlgaMerediz (Bianca Duarte) and Laura Pallas (Elisa Duarte) are Americans, Creator/AntonioBanderas (Ché) and Victoria Sus (Juana Ibarguren) are Spanish, Andrea Corr (Juan Perón's mistress) is Irish, and Jonathan Pryce (Juan Perón), Creator/JimmyNail (Agustin Magaldi), Julian Littman (Juancito Duarte), Julia Worsley (Erminda Duarte), Gary Brooker (Juan Atilio Bramuglia), Creator/PeterPolycarpou (Domingo Mercante) and Peter Hughes (Francisco Franco) are British.
* FollowTheLeader: ''Evita'' was followed by a slew of European sung-through musical biopics chronicling the glamorous wives of controversial political leaders ({{Theatre/Elisabeth}} of Austria, [[Theatre/MarieAntoinetteMusical Marie Antoinette]], Catherine the Great, Imelda Marcos, etc.), narrated by a sarcastic male character.
* HideYourPregnancy: About midway through the film production, Music/{{Madonna}} discovered that she was pregnant with her first child. The film directors went to great lengths to cover up the possibility of her "Eva Peron" getting pregnant, even if it meant removing some scenes of her being carried out of the church for fear she might slip. The music video for "You Must Love Me" was filmed after production had wrapped which is why she spends the entire video standing behind a piano.
* NoDubForYou: Because the 1996 film was adapted from a sung-through concept album, all of the international releases feature the original English dialogue, even though the stage production had received many translations by that point. This is also explainable by Madonna’s involvement, as international fans wouldn’t have wanted to hear another singer’s voice come out of Madonna’s mouth.
* SavedFromDevelopmentHell: There were multiple attempts to make a film version of ''Evita'', dating back its to first wave of its fame in the 1970s:
** Jon Peters was offered to co-produce with fellow friend Robert Stigwood, who wanted to cast his then-girlfriend Music/BarbraStreisand as Eva but she turned it down due to not being fond of the New York stage musical.
** Creator/KenRussell was attached to direct, but left over an irreconcilable difference of opinion regarding the casting of the lead role; Stigwood, Creator/AndrewLloydWebber and Tim Rice were determined to cast Elaine Paige, the actress who had created the role in the West End, and Russell was equally determined not to. His own first choice was [=Karla DeVito=], and after she was turned down he also considered Creator/LizaMinnelli.
** After Russell dropped out over the producers' refusal to cast Minnelli, they approached multiple high-profile directors, including Herbert Ross (who turned it down to direct ''Film/{{Footloose}}''), Creator/RichardAttenborough (who claimed adapting the musical would be impossible), Alan J. Pakula, Hector Babenco, and Creator/FrancisFordCoppola.
** Hot off the success of ''Film/{{Platoon}}'', Creator/OliverStone lobbied to direct the project, going so far as to meet with the President of Argentina, Carlos Menem, to secure location permits and extras. He cast Creator/MerylStreep as Eva, who began recording the musical dub track (that Lloyd Webber called "staggering"), but the production imploded due to the 1989 Argentina riots and a pay dispute with Streep.
** Stone left to work on ''[[Film/TheDoors1991 The Doors]]'' and the producers hired ''Series/{{Moonlighting}}'' creator Glenn Gordon Caron as a replacement. That arrangement, in turn, fell apart when Disney backed out as a financier, at which point Stone was rehired, and then fired again.
* StarMakingRole: The role of Eva is perhaps one of the greatest examples of modern musical theater. The original productions launched the careers of Elaine Paige and Patti [=LuPone=], two of the most respected musical actresses of their generation; "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" remains a SignatureSong for both of them to this day. The movie version was perhaps Madonna's best reviewed acting performance, and the 2006 revival introduced Elena Roger to the English-speaking world.
* TroubledProduction: The film spent twenty years in development, at the end of which screenwriter Creator/OliverStone sued the production for denying him a screenwriter's credit and forcing the Writers Guild to step in.
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