Trivia / Ad Astra

• Acclaimed Flop: The film received mostly positive reviews, but grossed only $124.5 million worldwide on a $80-100 million budget.
• Contractual Obligation Project: Since the movie was already filmed when Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, the larger company had to honor their new subsidiary's release schedule and release it theatrically.
• Dueling Works: The second half of 2019 was packed with films about astronauts who have family/relationship issues, with Astronaut (starring Richard Dreyfuss), Ad Astra, Lucy in the Sky and Proxima. Both Ad Astra and Lucy in the Sky were produced by Fox and released after the buyout by Disney. Both Astronaut and Ad Astra have a male protagonist going to the Moon and elderly people going to space, and feature the concept of space tourism (Angus from Astronaut wins a competition to become the first space tourist, and Ad Astra has regular flights booked for the Moon, the main colonisation hub of which has been turned into yet another consumerist destination for tourists). Ad Astra won by default by virtue of being the only film out of these to gross over $100 million worldwide and getting the best reviews, but as mentioned was largely ignored by audiences and only made a meager profit.
• Executive Meddling: James Gray was forced to rework the end with reshoots.
• Fake American: Irish Ruth Negga adopts a neutral American accent for her role as the head of the Mars colony.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The first trailer has several moments of Roy interacting with his wife that didn't make it into the finished film. There's also a shot of Roy at a press conference with a group of other astronauts; not only is the press conference not in the finished film, neither are any of the other astronauts (unless they're among the space antenna workers glimpsed briefly near the beginning). And a scene where Roy is walking along some guards while many people around him are getting into fights and odd holo-graphic strippers.
• Playing Against Type: Natasha Lyonne has a cameo as a straight-laced but friendly border agent on the Moon. Lyonne usually plays edgy, sarcastic and self-destructive characters.
• Release Date Change: Likely due to the buyout of Fox by Disney, the film went through a series of differing release dates from January 21st, 2019 to May 24, 2019 before finally coming out on September 20th, 2019.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: Filming and post-production were completed in 2017, but the buyout of Fox by Disney (and mandated reshoots) generated complications for the release schedule of a number of Fox projects including this one.
• Throw It In!: Roy crying when his father tells him he never cared about him was not in the script; Brad Pitt spontaneously started crying while filming that scene. Since the scene took place in a zero-gravity environment, Pitt approached director James Gray afterward and asked that the tear be altered in post to bubble near his eye instead of rolling down his cheek, but Gray refused, as the acting was just "too good."
• Those Two Actors:
  • Minor case in Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland, who once again star together in a relatively hard science fiction film involving the Moon and nuclear weapons 19 years after Space Cowboys. Unfortunately, they never share a scene.
  • In a more minor example, Loren Dean plays the copilot of the Cepheus and also appeared in Space Cowboys.
• What Could Have Been: Thomas Newman was originally set to score the film but dropped out due to unknown reasons and was replaced by Max Richter.

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