The Energy Corporation is based in Houston, Texas. However, shooting for the film took place in Europe, with the then-recently built BMW Headquarters in Munich, Germany being portrayed as the Energy Corporation's headquarters. Other scenes were shot in Hampshire, England.
All of the game scenes were filmed at the Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle. The same venue used for Basketball in the 1972 Olympics. The site of the infamous Gold Medal game where the USSR was inexplicably given extra time to win the final game in the last few seconds.
Dyeing for Your Art: Many of the extras received an additional wage in order to cut their fashionably long hair, so the look of the movie would not be tied to the era in which it was produced.
The cast made up their own rules for Rollerball, which greatly adds to the realism.
Supposedly, when filming was completed, the stuntmen wanted to play a for-real game before the sets were struck, but the studio nixed the idea. Something about "liability" and "lawsuits the size of the Oort Cloud"...
The scene where drugged-up party-goers shoot up some magnificent trees with a futuristic rocket gun is disturbing enough. But just imagine how it would've been if they'd followed the original scripted idea, where they took turns shooting a dog...
Creator Killer: The remake was a serious blow to director John McTiernan's decorated career before receiving a double tap with Basic the following year and was torpedoed entirely by his arrest for lying to the FBI a short few years later.
Disowned Adaptation: William Harrison has said that he never saw the remake, let alone had any interest in it. It was even disowned by John McTiernan himself, the film being butchered by heavy editing due to Executive Meddling, which completely altered its message.
Following the negative test screenings, MGM ordered massive re-shoots and re-edits to be done on the film in the summer of 2001. Shortly after the test screenings, MGM appointed a new head of marketing and distribution, Robert Levin, who convinced John McTiernan to let go of the summer release date. This would give the studio more time to devise a better marketing strategy and allow McTiernan to do re-shoots and to re-edit the film for a PG-13 rating, in an attempt by studio to get a wider audience to see the film. The release date was then pushed again from August all the way to February of 2002, due to all the post production work causing delays. McTiernan shot two weeks of additional footage in the fall of 2001 to clarify certain scenes, especially the film's ending, and also cut down the violence and nudity.
Around 30 minutes were cut out of the original rough cut of the film, and the entire ending was re-shot and changed. Some of the cuts were made because MGM thought that the movie was "Too Asian". In the original ending, Petrovich gets killed by Sanjay, while Jonathan and Aurora take the plane back to the US, during which Jonathan says that he will continue playing the Rollerball game there, and how he is now part owner of the game.
The original score by Brian Transeau was also removed because it sounded "Too Arabic" and was replaced with a new score by Eric Serra. Also, some of the other music was changed or removed from the first cut of the film.
Missing Episode: Some of the scenes that were cut to get a PG-13 rating, but were never put back, even in later DVD and Blu-Ray releases (which are advertised as now being R rated), including a lot more blood in all the Rollerball scenes and parts like skulls getting smashed, bones getting broken, teeth flying out... The scene where Aurora is topless and walks towards Jonathan in the locker room originally didn't have a shadow over her (this was added in post production to cover her up for the PG-13 rating); their sex scene was also longer, and so was their conversation while they're laying down in the sauna. Some of the other similar edits that were done on more graphic scenes in the film included digitally replacing blood spurts with sweat.
Release Date Change: Following negative test screenings, the release date was pushed forward from May to 13 July of 2001 by MGM in order to test the movie again, hoping that they would find the right audience for it. Ultimately, the wide-ranging changes pushed the film back to February of 2002.
Role-Ending Misdemeanor: John McTiernan's decision to have a private detective wiretap the phone of one of his producers ultimately completely destroyed his directing career. McTiernan wanted to get dirt on the producer in the event he was badmouthing the studio to blackmail him into moving along with his vision of the film, and then later lied to the FBI about it by claiming that it was only about his divorce proceedings at the time, and that there was no discussion of wiretapping. Ultimately, when he finally faced the music, in an attempt to prevent his ranch from being taken away, he filed for bankruptcy. McTiernan has not had any film roles ever since.
Star-Derailing Role: Chris Klein never really recovered from the remake's poor box office performance and negative critical reception. After gaining recognition from the American Pie films, this film's failure (along with that of Say It Isn't So) killed his potential future as a headliner. Klein attempted one last shot at a leading man role with Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, whose failure closed the lid on his star's coffin.
Anyone who's seen the original script says it was very good, but John McTiernan disliked it and ordered multiple rewrites. Principal photography took place in 2000, but after uniformly negative test screenings the studio ordered reshoots. The film was then heavily cut for a more family-friendly rating.
The infamous night vision sequence was actually a re-shot version of the scene. After realizing that they shot original version of the scene to look too dark, the filmmakers had to return and re-shoot the entire sequence, delaying the movie's release for six months. But due to the budget issues, this scene couldn't be finished properly, so it was decided to add a green visual tint to the scene to make it look like night vision, even though it makes no sense for why this scene would have that look.
In the middle of all this, the director hired a private investigator to put a wiretap on the phone of one of the producers and then lied to the FBI about it, for which he would later serve several months in a federal prison. The end result was critically panned (3% on Rotten Tomatoes) and earned just over a third of its budget.
Wag the Director: Rebecca Romijn only accepted her part in the film once they agreed to remove a nude scene and provide her with a deep facial scar.
game where the USSR was inexplicably given extra time to win the final game in the last few seconds.