Box Office Bomb: Budget, $65 million. Box office, $17,218,080. Numerous reports on the film's Troubled Production place the blame on Bruce Willis letting his ego run rampant, causing multiple re-shoots and editing wars. This ended up being Tristar Pictures final film before they were merged with Columbia.
Bruce Willis has sometimes expressed dissatisfaction with the film, but has defended it at other times, claiming that people didn't "get it" at the time but that it's been Vindicated by History into a Cult Classic.
Dueling Dubs: The film was dubbed into Japanese three times. In addition to the home media version produced by Tohokushinsha Film, there are two television dubs: one produced by Glovision for Fuji Television and another one produced by KSS for Nippon Television. Kosei Tomita, Tommy's voice actor for the home media release, reprised his role for Fuji TV's dub, while Kiyoshi Kobayashi and Kazue Komiya, who respectively voiced Kaplan and Minerva for the home media release, reprised their roles for Nippon TV's dub.
Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Enrico Lo Verso plays the apprentice in the original English release and reprises his role for the Italian dub.
The Other Marty: Isabella Rossellini was originally cast as Anna Baragli. When the movie was delayed because of scheduling issues, the part was re-cast with Maruschka Detmers. She had to leave after a few days of shooting due to back problems. Andie MacDowell replaced her.
Shown Their Work: While the core economic principle of the plot is riddled with holes (in a post-Bretton Woods world), the Mayflowers plan to unlease their machine right before "in 1992, the European superpowers are coming together to form one business superpower." This refers directly to the 1992 Maastrict Treaty, which formed the modern day European Union.
Spared by the Cut: Tommy was supposed to die in the film, but Danny Aiello requested that he survive. He got his wish in that the movie still shows his Disney Villain Death - but then he reappears just fine, with an explanation of how he survived. A cut line from the movie pokes fun at how unlikely this is.
Troubled Production: The film gathered bad reaction before its release due to a disastrous production - egos running rampant, constant rewrites, clashes between director and star, you name it.
The film had been a long-time passion project for Bruce Willis and music executive Robert Kraft, with Willis finally had enough clout to get it produced — with full creative control and the final say over casting and the choice of writer and director to boot — after his success with Die Hard and its sequel. Despite producer Joel Silver's preference for making it a straightforward action film, Willis insisted on staying true to its original concept as a send-up of action and heist films.
After Die Hard director John McTiernan turned the project down (he would later have his own similarly disastrous production of an action film spoof with Last Action Hero), Willis ended up hiring the Heathers creative team of director Michael Lehmann and writer Daniel Waters. Waters ended up quitting the project at a relatively early stage after repeatedly coming into conflict with Willis, but ended up retaining co-writer credit on the finished film. In the meantime, a revolving door of writers tried to turn Willis' ideas into something workable; usually Willis would hire one writer to deliver on his Denser and Wackier vision, only for Silver to hire someone else who would rewrite it into something more conventional. Eventually, Steven E. de Souza, the co-writer of the first two Die Hard films and the one screenwriter whom both Willis and Silver approved of (and who would share writing credit with Waters on the finished product), was hired to get the final screenplay together.
An example of Willis' flippant approach to production came when Silver wanted Richard E. Grant to play the film's villain, but Lehmann wanted to Gender Lift the villain and have her played by Sandra Bernhard (after initial choice Audrey Hepburn declined due to health problems, which in retrospect were likely early symptoms of the cancer that would eventually kill her in 1993). Willis decided to Take a Third Option and cast Grant and Bernhard as husband and wife, leading to yet more rewrites. This did though have one unexpected upside in that Grant and Bernhard ended up getting on very well, and together they did a lot to keep the on-set atmosphere up during the troublesome shoot and remain friends to this day.
The delays in getting the screenplay together forced original female lead Isabella Rossellini to drop out — Willis would instead later work with her on Death Becomes Her — and filming began with Dutch actress Maruschka Detmers in the role of Anna. After only a few days of filming, Detmers dropped out, allegedly due to a back problem.note (Some sources indicate that Detmers quit after openly insulting Willis and decrying the screenplay's quality on-set, though this is contradicted by other sources, which claim that Willis got Detmers a role in The Mambo Kings out of sympathy for her being forced to drop out of Hudson Hawk)Andie MacDowell in turn replaced Detmers — Willis reportedly wanted Famke Janssen, but was overruled — at such short notice that she didn't have time to learn how to do a convincing Italian accent, leading to Anna conspicuously having a Southern American accent despite her Italian name.
During filming, Willis kept constantly changing the screenplay and demanding new scenes be filmed on the fly, effectively leaving Lehmann as director in name only. Silver initially indulged Willis, but following complaints from Lehmann that the storyline was rapidly losing any form of coherency, was forced to fly de Souza out to the studios in Italy for emergency rewrites.
Between the need for rewrites and the Italian crew reportedly not wanting to work after 5PM, the originally-planned 60-day shoot ended up ballooning to 105 days, causing the budget to skyrocket, reportedly as high as $70 million. The cinematographer, Jost Vacano quit and refused to be credited on the finished product, leading to Dante Spinotti taking over for the remainder of filming and getting sole credit. The only saving grace was that there was very little in the way of Hostility on the Set (at least, not involving Willis), other than MacDowell taking offence to a joke that Bernhard cracked about her appearance early in filming, and even then Grant was able to step in and smooth things out before things got too heated.
Journalists didn't shy away from reporting on the chaotic production, and Willis in turn made things worse by publicly insulting said journalists. This ensured a tidal wave of negative publicity (including comparisons to then-recent vanity projects such as Harlem Nights and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier) and unfavorable reviews when it was eventually released.
The film ended up losing out to Backdraft in its opening weekend, and then sank like a stone, turning it into a major Box Office Bomb with just over $17 million grossed domestically. Somehow, the immensely troubled production on top of the critical and commercial failure of the end result didn't sink the relationship between Silver and Willis, who apparently agreed between themselves to blame Lehmann for the film's failure and moved onto The Last Boy Scout... which did end up killing their relationship after a similarly troubled production.
In the earlier versions of the script most of the third act took place at the Kremlin, where a scale model of Da Vinci's helicopter was being kept.
Minerva Mayflower was not in the original drafts. This came about because there was initially supposed to be a single antagonist originally meant for a male actor, but Michael Lehmann suggested casting Audrey Hepburn in the film, and the villain was subsequently rewritten as a villainess so that Hepburn could play that part. Negotiations between the producers and Hepburn broke down, but Bruce Willis suggested to take both villains from the earlier drafts and make them a couple.
Willis asked that Famke Janssen be considered for a role after seeing her in a Pantene television commercial. She screen tested for a role but was not cast. The two later acted opposite each other in Once Upon A Time In Venice.
There was a whole subplot about "Little Eddie," Hawk's pet monkey that Tommy was taking care of, who was kidnapped and executed just before Hawk was released from prison. Hawk ends up accusing Cesar Mario of doing it (Cesar denies it), and Kaplan tells Hawk he killed "Little Eddie" just before leaving Hawk and Tommy to die in Anna's apartment. When Hawk dispatches Kaplan, he pins a photo of Little Eddie in a graduation cap to him and tells him "This is for Little Eddie" before pushing him off the ledge onto Mayflower's runaway limo.
Written by Cast Member: Bruce Willis shares story credit with record producer/songwriter and future head of music at Fox, Robert Kraft (Willis had been friends with Kraft in his pre-stardom bartender days, Kraft had written a song about the "Hudson hawk" with what would be the basic story of the movie).
