Trivia / The Raven (2012)

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $26 million. Box office, $16,008,272 (domestic), $29,657,751 (worldwide).
• California Doubling: Budapest, Hungary and Belgrade, Serbia stood in for Baltimore.
• Creator Killer: This film was one of the films that served as the one-two punch for Rogue Pictures (the other being House at the End of the Street) before Movie 43 served as its coup de grâce and was quietly retired. In fact, its owner Relativity Media weren't even using the name on promotional materials for this film and House at the End of the Street, as their output was already more miss than hit in terms of box office.
• Fake American: Although set in Baltimore, the film has a mainly British cast playing Americans. John Cusack is the only American in the main cast.
• Meaningful Release Date: The first trailer was released on 7 October 2011, 162 years to the day after Poe's death.
• Star-Derailing Role: This film's negative reviews and mostly lukewarm commercial success seem to have been the last straw for John Cusack's career after most of the movies he made in the 2000s were critical (and even sometimes commercial) flops, as he's mostly done only independent films since then, with the exception of a cameo in The Butler. However, he has also stated that disillusionment with working in Hollywood (particularly its treatment of women and child actors) also played a part, causing him to pull back from larger films and prefer working on independent projects.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Joaquin Phoenix and Ewan McGregor were in negotiations for the role of Poe.
  • Jeremy Renner was set to play Inspector Fields, but dropped out when he decided to do Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.
  • At one point, it was reported that there were attempts to set up a rival Poe biopic that would've had Robert Downey Jr. as Poe.

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