Jamie Lee Curtis said the film's script was so weird she barely understood it, but she jumped at the opportunity of working with Michelle Yeoh; she wound up taking home an Oscar for it.
Michelle Yeoh herself also was weirded out by the premise, but felt intrigued and loved the challenge. She was also moved by the scope of her role in that it would allow her to touch on all aspects of the acting skills she had built up over her career, notably getting emotional once while speaking about it. She too would win an Oscar for her performance.
"This is something I’ve been waiting for for a long time that’s going to give me the opportunity to show my fans, my family, my audience what I’m capable of. To be funny. To be real. To be sad. Finally, somebody understood that I can do all these things."
Deleted Role: Spaghetti Baby Noodle Boy, the title character of a nonexistent A24 movie Evelyn would've ended up in shortly after the Fake-Out Fade-Out. The final film briefly shows him in a shot of some noodles flying through the air, but he doesn't say anything.
With Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, another movie that came out in 2022 that explores The Multiverse. The two were almost in direct competition with one another — both movies were set to come out in March at one point until Doctor Strange underwent a Release Date Change, though the two still opened less than two months apart. However, Multiverse of Madness is a Superhero Horror adventure movie while this film is a genre-bending action dramedy.
With Turning Red; both are about an inter-generational conflict between a Chinese immigrant mother and her daughter raised in North America, with a supernatural twist complicating things. Unlike Turning Red however, the protagonist/antagonist roles are switched. Both also have James Hong in a supporting role.
The film is about (among other things) the unexpected quirks of fate that can lead people's lives down unexpected paths, and the natural human tendency to wonder how our lives might have turned out in a different timeline. With that in mind, it's pretty appropriate that it stars Michelle Yeoh, who became an actor because a spinal injury prematurely ended her dreams of becoming a professional ballerina.
For some bizarre reason, Japan released this film in March 2023, around a year after its original release in the U.S. and after being released basically everywhere else (no pun intended).
The same thing happened, to a lesser degree, in South Korea, when the film was released there in October 2022.
Meaningful Release Date: The movie takes place primarily in an IRS office, and its release (March 25/April 8) was on the backend of 2022's tax season.
Hsu, Yeoh, and Andy Le appeared in both Everything Everywhere and 2021's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The Russo brothers produced both Everything Everywhere and many Marvel films (although not Shang-Chi itself).
Tallie Medel (Becky) and Sunita Mani (the female lead in the movie musical Evelyn watches at the laundromat) are in the dance group Cocoon Central together, and DANIELS produced the group's short film Snowy Bing Bongs Across the North Star Combat Zone. Sunita Mani was also in the DANIELS-directed music video for Lil' Jon's "Turn Down For What."
Promoted Fanboy: Michelle Yeoh found cases of this in both DANIELS, who downright wrote her character for her, and fight choreographers Brian and Andy Le, who she said knew all her moves given their martial arts lessons were watching Hong Kong movies.
Sleeper Hit: The film opened in only ten theaters but played strongly in limited release. It went wide two weeks later and remained in the domestic box office top ten for three months, buoyed by strong reviews and word of mouth (plus a relative scarcity in post-COVID-19 lockdown competition), and eventually became indie distributor A24's highest-grossing film ever. It grossed over $70 million domestically, more than every major Oscar contender from 2021 except for Dune (2021), and over $100 million worldwide off of an estimated $25 million budgetnote later revealed to be $14.3 million!, making it both the first independent film of the pandemic era and first A24 film to pass that mark.
Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer contains multiple clues about who the main antagonist is.
Uncredited Role: Randy Newman's voice role as Raccacoonie is uncredited in the theatrical release of the film, though he is still credited as a singer in the song "Now We're Cookin'". However in the home media release he's properly credited for the role.
The movie was originally envisioned as a Jackie Chan vehicle, but the Daniels decided the main character should be a woman. In this original script, Michelle Yeoh was meant to fill Waymond's role, but with the switch, she became the protagonist.
After the protagonist switch was made, the Daniels were so fixated on having Michelle Yeoh play the role that Evelyn's original name was changed to Michelle. Yeoh personally turned down this idea, as she wanted the story of Evelyn to stand on its own and dislikes integrating her personality with her characters.
Awkwafina was originally in the running to play Joy before dropping out due to scheduling conflicts.
According to co-director Daniel Kwan, "Big Nose" had a "full arc" that was cut from the film. "[She and Evelyn] had this touching moment on the staircase that helps clean up that loop. Instead we just beat up her dog and she's gone." The scene on the staircase (plus Evelyn learning to empathize with her Martial Arts Universe sifu) was released as a special feature on YouTube ahead of the movie's DVD/Blu-Ray release.
Cinematographer Larkin Seiple wanted to film the Desolate Rock Universe scenes on 15/70mm IMAX, but it wasn't within their budget. The remote shooting location eventually proved to be such a hassle that Seiple was ultimately glad that complicated IMAX cameras hadn't been added to the mix.
The scenes where Evelyn and Joy were rocks were supposed to have spoken dialogue, but Yeoh suggested to the Daniels that the scenes should be completely silent with text dialogue instead.
Write What You Know: An accidental example, if you can believe it. The Daniels had intended to write the protagonist with undiagnosed symptoms of ADHD, and while doing research on the condition, Daniel Kwan discovered that he'd been living with it undiagnosed for a good half of his life through their research. Evelyn being implied to have ADHD is still retained in the final product.
Johnathan Wang, everyone at Pixar loved the Raccacoonie parody and gave the okay to its inclusion in the film. Brad Bird, the director of Ratatouille, loved the parody as well