Trivia / Gravity

• Actor-Inspired Element: Originally Stone's daughter was alive but Sandra Bullock though it would be more interesting if Stone didn't have anyone to go back to giving her less of a reason to not give up.
• Channel Hop: Universal was originally set to distribute the film, but they sent it to Warner Bros. after Angelina Jolie left.
• Development Hell: Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón developed the script at Universal Pictures. Universal hoped to attach Angelina Jolie to the project, but decided the film was too expensive, and put the film into turn-around. The film spent four years in development hell because the cinematography, visual effects, and realistic "story atmosphere" of vacuum were too challenging. Alfonso Cuarón had to wait for technology to catch up to his vision. That finally happened in 2009, with James Cameron's game changer Avatar (2009).
• Dueling Movies: With All Is Lost, another film featuring a single character stranded in a hostile environment who struggles to survive (in this case a sailor lost at sea in the midst of a storm trying to get back to land).
• Follow the Leader: The movie's famous plot twist has become somewhat of a new trope in minimalist survival thrillers, with films like 47 Meters Down and Fall using it.
• Life Imitates Art: The movie depicts a Russian anti-satellite missile unleashing a huge swarm of debris across low-Earth-orbit, with life-threatening consequences. On November 15, 2021, this exact same thing happened, right down to the ISS being endangered and the astronauts onboard standing by to Abandon Ship if the station took a bad hit. Thankfully, the ISS was spared this time, but the debris will remain in orbit for years if not decades, so it's anyone's guess what the long-term impact will be.
• Meaningful Release Date: Released on the 56th anniversary of Sputnik 1 and coincidentally on the same week when NASA was shut down. Stephen Colbert referenced this on an episode of The Colbert Report.
• Preview Piggybacking: Inversion (the "highly-anticipated work promotes a lesser-known one" version). The radio conversation that Stone holds while aboard the Soyuz is actually connected to co-writer Jonás Cuarón's Aningaaq, a short film about a Greenlandic Inuit fisherman out with his huskies, his wife, and his newborn, unable to understand, let alone comfort the dying astronaut in space. However, this short was written deliberately to work as a companion piece to Gravity: not only does it show the other end of the poignant conversation, the seven-minute short encapsulates the same broad themes of life and death of its larger sibling —just as Stone goes over the brink of despair, Aningaaq himself isn't playing with his dogs as she believes in her film; he's actually devastated over the prospect of sacrificing his beloved, elderly husky.
• Production Posse: Emmanuel Lubezki (Y tu mamá también, Children of Men) was once again behind the camera as DP.
  • Visual effects firm Framestore also returned to VFX duties from Children. It ended up becoming their highest-grossing live-action film.
  • This is also the second time Cuaron has worked with producer David Heyman, who produced the Harry Potter films.
• Sleeper Hit: Ended up having the highest box-office opening of any October (or Autumn) release movie of 2013 not to be a sequel or superhero adaptation. Hell, it even surpassed Man of Steel and Thor: The Dark World when international grosses were taken into account.
• Technology Marches On: The space shuttles were retired in July 2011, less than two months after filming of the movie began.
• Troubled Production: As discussed in this article. Cuarón hoped to jump right into the film after wrapping work on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but it took him four and a half years just to begin work, as the technology required to make the film didn't exist yet and had to be developed specifically for this film. Lead actors George Clooney and Sandra Bullock spent long days locked inside a 9'-by-9' cube filled with cameras and LED screens giving them instructions, and while significant problems didn't occur, just the planned experience was, by all accounts, hellish. Needless to say, things turned out well, as the film opened to positive reviews and became a box office smash, breaking records for the highest weekend debut for the month of October and the entire fall season.
• Voice-Only Cameo: Ed Harris lends his voice to Mission Control, which is not the first time he's been in the big room in Houston.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original choice to play Kowalski was Robert Downey Jr.. After he left the project, Kevin Costner, Daniel Craig, Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, John Travolta, Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis were all considered.
  • Angelina Jolie was originally cast as Stone, but dropped out later. Natalie Portman turned down the role shortly before she announced her pregnancy. Abbie Cornish, Marion Cotillard, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Blake Lively, Carey Mulligan, Sienna Miller, Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Wilde were also considered.
• By the way, if you are scratching your head thinking that "gravity" has little to do with this film because she is in "Zero-G" you are excused because it is a common misconception that "there is no gravity in orbit" - however there is plenty of gravity in orbit - if you build a skyscraper up to the level of the International Space Station's orbit you would be able to comfortably stand on the roof (in a spacesuit). Just like how you throw a ball straight and it eventually falls to the ground far from you, spaceships and satellites in orbit are accelerated - "thrown" - sideways at such a speed (about 7 miles per second) that by the time they fall to what would be the ground the Earth naturally curves away - they are falling around the earth, just not straight down at it. So yes, the title is perfectly appropriate. Although Neil deGrasse Tyson stated that the film should have been titled "Angular Momentum".
  • Alternatively, you could say that the name of the film revolved around their situation, and just how bad it is. Stranded in space because the shuttle you came up on was wiped out by debris, the ISS is out of commission, and your only hope of survival rests in getting to another space station that's in a decaying orbit. If you don't understand the meaning by that point, you're either on the ground, or dead.

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