Trivia / Executive Decision

• The Cast Showoff: David Grant is seen taking flight lessons, and is about to go solo. In real-life, Kurt Russell is an FAA licensed pilot and holds ratings for several aircraft types.
• Contractual Obligation Project: Steven Seagal had to appear in this film after the budget of On Deadly Ground ballooned out of control. His contract for that film stipulated that all non-approved budget overages would be taken out of his salary and the amount ended up exceeding it. The studio said that the debt would be forgiven if Seagal agreed to Executive Decision.
• Directed by Cast Member: Alain Zouvi directed the Canadian French dub while also voicing Carlos "Rat" Lopez.
• Fake Nationality: English David Suchet plays a Middle-Eastern terrorist.
• Hostility on the Set: John Leguizamo revealed in his autobiography that he didn't exactly gel with his costars.
  • His frequent improvisation angered Kurt Russell so much, that they got into a shoving match. Leguizamo's improvised line "Hope the smell doesn't give us away." started the fight.
  • Steven Seagal physically attacked him during filming, in an effort to scare the cast and crew. Leguizamo claimed that he had laughed at something that Seagal said, thinking it was a joke, but Seagal proved him wrong by elbowing him against a wall.
    We were in rehearsals. I’m playing his Master Sergeant, and we come in for rehearsals and he says, ‘I’m in command. Everything I say is law. Anybody doesn’t agree?’ I was like, ‘Bwahahaha.’ I started cracking up because he sounded like a retard … He came up and he Taekwondo’ed my ass against the brick wall... He’s six-foot-five and he caught me off guard and knocked all of the air out of me and I was like, ‘Why?! Why?!’ I really wanted to say how big and fat he was and that he runs like a girl, but I didn’t because all I could say was, ‘Why?!’ Why’d he slam me against the wall? We were rehearsing.
• Money, Dear Boy:
  • Originally Halle Berry refused to be in this movie, but said yes when she was offered $1 million, her first for a film.
  • Ahmed Ahmed initially refused his part as one of the terrorists, and even tried to fail the audition on purpose. The turning point was when they told him how much they were going to pay him.
• Playing Against Type: Kurt Russell was pretty entrenched in the public consciousness as an Action Hero when this came out, which made it surprising for him to be playing a desk-jockey who gets pulled into the adventure.
• Stunt Casting: Steven Seagal barely has two minutes of screen time before dying with a heroic one liner.
• Troubled Production: Originally, Steven Seagal refused to shoot his death scene, for fear that his fans wouldn't like it. Stuart Baird insisted he must do it as scripted, though Seagal held up filming for a few days and argued that the scene was not realistic. Finally after threat of contractual breach, Seagal agreed to return to filming. Leguizamo recalled, “It was 6 a.m., he was supposed to die… and we shot his death at 8 p.m.”.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: Various reasons have been bandied about for why Steven Seagal had so little screentime in the finished film, despite being prominently promoted in the trailers and promo art. These possible reasons include Warner Bros. "punishing" Seagal because of his antics on the set of On Deadly Ground^note This one was partly true. He was contractually obligated to pay for that film's budget overages out of his own pocket but the studio told him the debt would be forgiven if he appeared in this film, his primadonna behavior, or both. In actuality, Seagal's character (Travis) was always meant to die in the finished film. The earliest draft of the script (written in April 1991) had Travis die in the exact same way, with the only difference being that he didn't have a final line telling Grant to keep the team safe, and the team originally used the umbilical of a refueling airplane instead of a stealth jet to get onto the plane.

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