Trivia / Death Race

• Actor-Shared Background: Max Ryan (Slovo) was a professional motorcross racer before he was an actor.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Joan Allen was the production's first choice to play the female warden. Much to Paul W.S. Anderson's surprise, Allen was just as keen to do the film, wanting to shake up her image.
• The Danza: Luke Goss as Carl "Luke" Lucas in the prequels.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Jason Statham trained so hard for the role that he went from 20% body fat to 6%. It took him 3 months to do so.
• Executive Veto: One of the remits for Jason Statham and his numerous fight scenes in the film was that he should never resort to martial arts as that would be too reminiscent of The Transporter films.
• Prop Recycling: In the second movie, most of the cars from the first are re-used, though in many cases they have different weapons mounted on them. Joker and Nero's trucks in the third movie are custom jobs left over from Fast Five.
• Stealth Prequel: Director Paul W.S. Anderson considers the film this, because it shows the origins of the "Death Race" featured in the original film, and an earlier iteration of the "Frankenstein" character.
• Throw It In!: One of the crashes staged for the film unexpectedly sent the empty stunt car much higher than intended, so it hung up on top of a wall rather than smashed into it. The resulting footage looked so cool that the filmmakers went back and equipped one of the other racers' vehicles with a rocket launcher suitable for blowing rival drivers sky-high, purely so they could justify using the clip.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In 2000, the first rumors mentioned a sequel to Death Race 2000 titled Death Race 3000, set in the far future and featuring cars that could split in two and rejoin, transform, and even become invisible.
  • Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner were originally attached as producers. Roger Corman had an option agreement with Cruise, with the idea that Cruise would play the lead. This never got off the ground as Cruise was unhappy with the first 3 versions of the script that had been submitted.
  • Colin Salmon was considered for Machine Gun Joe.

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