Trivia / Seven Years in Tibet

• Banned in China: This film is banned there for its criticism of the Chinese government. It also caused Brad Pitt, David Thewlis and Jean-Jacques Annaud to be banned from entering the country, though Annaud was allowed to return 15 years later for the Shanghai Film Festival and Pitt got back in without trouble for the Chinese premiere of his wife Angelina Jolie's film Maleficent.
• Box Office Bomb: At least from the perspective of the 90s accounting, following the trend of its era, with Hollywood book-keepers declaring mild successes as failures. Budget 70 million, 38 millions made in domestic market... and another 93.5 on international one. However, since this was mid-90s, any film that didn't earn back own budget from domestic market alone was by default considered a financial disaster. Today the exact same performance would be considered low, but definitely not a bomb.
• California Doubling: Argentinian Andes for the Himalayas and Argentina in general for everything else (small sections of forest locations were done in Canada, too). Said that, over 20 minutes of footage were secretly filmed in Tibet, without any approval of the Chinese authorities, which only further added to the post-release scandal and Sony's troubles with the Chinese ban on all of their movies. Also, originally the film was planned to be made in Ladakh, which is an Indian border state with the Himalayans, to be used as a very close stand-in for Tibet, but the Chinese government started to push really hard against it.
• Enforced Method Acting: When Heinrich confronts Ngawang, the director didn't tell BD Wong that the rewritten script called for Brad Pitt to throw him into the dirt. Wong's surprised reaction is genuine.
• Fake Nationality:
  • An American and a Brit play a duo of Austrians. David Thewlis doesn't even try to hide his native accent, while Brad Pitt utterly fails at "Austrian"
  • Numerous extras are from Argentina. Including the ones that play Chinese soldiers.
• Money, Dear Boy: Disliking the script and the project as a whole, when asked to star in it, Brad Pitt demanded to be paid 8 million dollars upfront, as a way to get rid of the producers. Much to his surprise, TriStar Pictures and Sony Pictures execs agreed, so he decided to take the part, given the crazy amount of money offered. His paycheck made up more than 10% of the final production budget.
• Real-Life Relative: Jetsun Pema is the real-life sister of the 14th Dalai Lama. In the film, she plays their own mother.
• Troubled Production: The film was planned to be filmed in the Ladakh region of India. After a lot of fuss made by the Chinese government, right down to treats of turning off electricity in half of the region (supplied by Chinese hydroplant), the production relocated to Argentina, on the other side of the globe. This also required constructing additional sets, rather than just using Ladakh's pre-existing architecture and Buddhist monasteries.
• Underage Casting: David Thewlis was already a few years younger than Peter Aufschnaiter in 1939 (the year the film opens), but as the story progresses, almost 15 years pass in the background. His character doesn't age in any visible way, with 33-year-old Thewlis eventually portraying a man in his 50s.
• What Could Have Been: Daniel Day-Lewis and Ralph Fiennes were considered for Heinrich Harrer.

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