Trivia / Under the Skin

• Acclaimed Flop: The movie received rave reviews from pretty much every other professional critic and won several accolades. The general public, however, gave the film a far more lukewarm response and mixed to mediocre reviews. See Box Office Bomb.
• Amateur Cast: Many of the scenes where the alien picks up men were unscripted conversations with non-actors, filmed with hidden cameras that they were initially unaware of (they eventually signed agreements giving permission to be in the movie).
• Box Office Bomb: Budget: £8 million ($13.3 million). Box office: $7.2 million.
• Cast the Expert: Jeremy McWilliams, a champion motorcycle racer, was cast as the motorcyclist - because he'd be able to handle the treacherous road conditions on the Scottish highlands.
• Development Hell: The movie took nearly ten years to make.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: The director didn't want to use prosthetics for the disfigured man and the production team contacted the charity Changing Faces, which supports people with facial disfigurements, in order to cast the role. The role went to Adam Pearson, who has neurofibromatosis.
• Enforced Method Acting: The men lured into the van were not actors. Jonathan Glazer installed a hidden camera in the van and only told them afterwards that they were in a movie.
• Fake Brit: In-universe Scarlett Johansson's alien character disguises herself as a human woman and puts on an English accent - of the southern RP variety.
• The Walrus Was Paul: Suffice to say, the film leaves a lot of things ambiguous, starting with the characters' names and escalating from there. Why are the aliens on Earth? Who was the dead girl at the beginning? What happens to the baby on the beach? What exactly is the alien doing to the men, and where? What is the relationship between the alien and the motorcyclist? Why did her encounter with the man with the deformed face cause her to change? And so on.
• What Could Have Been:
  • An early draft of the script included a Scottish married couple, who'd turn out to be aliens in disguise. Brad Pitt was attached to star as one of them for a while.
  • Among the actresses considered were Jessica Biel, Abbie Cornish, Megan Fox, Eva Green, January Jones, Blake Lively, Amanda Seyfried and Olivia Wilde. Scarlett Johansson was the one who stayed on board for four years before it was finished.
  • Gemma Arterton was the director's preferred choice for the lead role, but she had to be recast due to Executive Meddling.

---