Trivia / Lords of Chaos

• All-Star Cast: Played with, as three main characters are played by people from famous acting families — Rory Culkin as Euronymous, Jack Kilmer as Dead, and Valter Skarsgard as Faust. Sky Ferreira, who plays Ann-Marit, is far better known for her work as a musician.
• Dawson Casting: Played straight with Emory Cohen, who was 26-27 while playing Varg Vikernes from age 17-18 to 20. Mostly averted with the rest of the main cast, particularly Jack Kilmer and Valter Skarsgard, who were fairly close in age to their real-life counterparts.
• Doing It for the Art: This seems to be Jonas's motivation, as the film was indie-distributed through small movie locations and not big movie chains. This is also helped by its release to Video on Demand two weeks after it's official release date in America. Jonas also clarified his reasoning for making the movie and planning it for years was so he could show the world the actual "human side" of the black metal scene instead of the violent/dark image documentaries and interviews show.
• Development Hell: Original planned film date and release date? 2009 and 2010. Then things got muddy and instead filming was done to 2016. Rory Culkin said he had grown his hair to play Euronymous across five years, cut it when it seemed the movie wouldn't come out, only to get a call about it two weeks later (his hair in the movie is a wig).
• Disowned Adaptation: Ye the gods, to say the black metal musicians of the Norway scene did not approve of this movie would be an understatement. It should be noted that out of all the bands of the scene that showed annoyance at Lords of Chaos, only Burzum, Mayhem, Darkthrone, and Watain (at least its vox) showed this. The other members of the scene are yet to comment or just don't care.
  • Attila of Mayhem did get a chance to see the film, and while he found it to be an "interesting watch" (along with confirming certain facts such as his son Arion playing him in the film, as well as songs of his other band Tormentor being featured in it, and acknowledging that the film focuses more on Mayhem while the book was on black metal as a whole), he more or less didn't comment much on it aside from he and his bandmates distancing themselves from the film as a "big fuck you" to it and its creators.
  • Varg Vikernes was especially irate over the film, issuing a statement denouncing the film for casting him with a Jewish actor (with Varg being an outspoken neo-Nazi and white supremacist) and depicting him in a negative light.
• Jews Playing Nazis: Varg, who in real life is a neo-Nazi, is played by the Jewish actor Emory Cohen. As noted above, the real Varg was not amused.
• Pop-Star Composer: Sigur Rós were composers for the film. After filming "Óveður", Jonas Åkerlund approached the band saying he had temped a draft of the film with their songs, especially from Von and Valtari, and the trio started work on the score from there. You can even hear "Dauðalogn" midway through the trailer!
• Prop Recycling: The burning churches were built out of the scenery for Blade Runner 2049, which also filmed in Budapest.
• Typecasting: This is Rory Culkin's second villain role in a horror film.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: Despite what Vikernes kept constantly saying, Mayhem did in fact allow their music to be used in the movie, as Åkerlund had dispelled this rumor multiple times.
• What Could Have Been: Originally the movie was planned for filming in 2009 by Japanese director Sion Sono and be released in 2010 with Jackson Rathbone as Varg Vikernes. However plans fell apart when Rathbone couldn't play Varg anymore due to "scheduling conflicts". Eventually the film was passed to Jonas Åkerlund to be filmed in 2015 but was changed to 2016 for unknown reasons.