- Box Office Bomb: Budget, $57 million. Box office, $18,133,495.
- Deleted Role: Jesse Plemons' scenes as the young John Grady Cole were completely cut from the film. He had no idea until he actually saw the film with friends and family.
- Disowned Adaptation: Downplayed. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2009, Cormac Mccarthy stated that he thought the movie could have been better, though he was doubtful that the original, longer cut would have made it better; in fact, he thought making it even shorter might have improved it:
"It could've been better. As it stands today it could be cut and made into a pretty good movie. The director had the notion that he could put the entire book up on the screen. Well, you can't do that. You have to pick out the story that you want to tell and put that on the screen. And so he made this four-hour film and then he found that if he was actually going to get it released, he would have to cut it down to two hours."
- Executive Meddling: After Billy Bob Thornton completed his cut (said to be somewhere between three and four hours), Harvey Weinstein forced him to cut more than another hour from it. Peter Biskind suggests in his book Down and Dirty Pictures that this was at least partially done as payback for Thornton's refusal to cut Sling Blade.
- Follow-Up Failure: Billy Bob Thornton's previous directorial effort was Sling Blade, which was a critical and commercial success. This was big enough failure to kill his love of filmmaking for a while.
- Separated-at-Birth Casting: Jesse Plemons shot scenes as the younger version of Matt Damon's character John Grady Cole, albeit his scenes ended up being deleted. Plemons is the same actor whose uncanny resemblance to Damon led to his meth-manufacturer character in Breaking Bad gaining the Fan Nickname "Meth Damon".
- What Could Have Been:
- At one time, Mike Nichols was attached to the project.
- Leonardo DiCaprio was considered for John Grady Cole. It was reported at the time that DiCaprio was dragging his feet in committing to the film. The producers decided not to wait around for his decision and ultimately cast Matt Damon. Brad Pitt and Nick Stahl were also offered the role.
- Natalie Portman turned down the role of Alejandra.
- Tobey Maguire was cast as Lacey Rawlins, but dropped out to be in The Cider House Rules.