- Acclaimed Flop: Despite starting out very strong and with even better reviews - or maybe in spite of those, as Hype Backlash seems to be at full force - the film lost all the momentum it had in the box office and struggled to recoup its production budget, let alone be profitablenote . It did, however, manage to turn a profit through video-on-demand after it left theaters.
- All-Star Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Kate Dickie and Ralph Ineson. There's also Icelandic stars Björk, Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson and Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson.
- California Doubling: The film is set in Northern Scotland, Iceland and Ukraine/Russia/Belarus while it was filmed throughout Ireland.
- Cast Incest: Alexander Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman play son and mother here and played a couple on Big Little Lies.
- Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Japanese dub, the Seeress is voiced by actress Akie Namiki, while Fjölnir is voiced by theater actor Zen Ishikawa.
- Dyeing for Your Art: Alexander Skarsgård worked out six days a week for six months to build the physique seen in the film putting on 20 lbs of muscle.
- Looping Lines: To an extreme extent. Eggers and Sjón's shooting script was light on character exposition, in true Icelandic epic fashion, but this left test audiences confused. They couldn't reshoot due to the film's use of long takes, so they wrote new dialogue in post to clarify motivations and concepts, and had the actors loop them in to replace the old dialogue. For extra difficulty, this had to match the original lip movements and fit the film's more medieval register.
- The Other Marty: Bill Skarsgård was initially cast as Thorir, but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts and was replaced by Gustav Lindh.
- Production Posse: Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, Kate Dickie, and Ralph Ineson have all worked with Robert Eggers on his previous films (Taylor-Joy, Ineson and Dickie in The VVitch, Dafoe in The Lighthouse).
- Those Two Actors:
- Alexander Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman previously collaborated on Big Little Lies.
- Kidman also previously appeared with Willem Dafoe in Aquaman. Dafoe also appeared alongside Ethan Hawke in Daybreakers.
- Kate Dickie and Ralph Ineson both appeared in The VVitch, The Green Knight and Game of Thrones (Dickie as Lady Lysa Arryn, Ineson as Dagmer Cleftjaw). Ian Whyte and Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson also both appeared in Game of Thrones, with both of them portraying Gregor Clegane at different points (Whyte also played other characters, such as White Walkers and giants). And Whyte also appeared in Prometheus alongside Kate Dickie; he played the Engineer and Dickie played Ford, the ship's medic.
- Troubled Production: Production was set to begin March 2020, but was put on hold due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, ultimately starting that August, and wrapping in December. The pandemic also caused the budget to balloon from $65 million to $90 million.
- Filming itself was also a grueling experience for the cast, who were enduring a nasty Irish winter (Claes Bang described it as "cold and rainy and miserable") and a lot of scenes who for being The Oner required to be filmed all over again in retakes - and Robert Eggers was fond of up to 30 takes! The cinematographer at a certain point told Eggers to hurry up as in spite of Anya Taylor-Joy not complaining she was visibly distressed by frozen, knee-high mud.
- In a bit of troubled post-production, test audiences responded poorly to the film's minimal exposition, forcing Eggers to re-write the script and have actors dub in new dialogue.
- Underage Casting: Nicole Kidman is only 9 years older than Alexander Skarsgård, who plays her character's son, due to her playing the character both when he's a kid and when he's a grown man.
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