Trivia / Ravenous (1999)

• Box Office Bomb: Budget: $12,000,000; Gross: $2,062,405.
• California Doubling: The Slovakian Tatra Mountains double for the Californian Sierra Nevadas.
• Fake American: Guy Pearce is an Australian playing the American Captain John Boyd.
• Screwed by the Network: Fox barely released the film (dumping it into 1,000 theatres during a crowded month) and mismarketed it with spoilerous trailer as a teen-aimed horror film rather than the historical thriller that it really is. Not surprisingly, the film did awful business at the box office (but rented decently at video stores).
• Shrug of God: Pertaining to the identity of the villain. Did Reverend Colqhoun take Colonel Ives' identity after killing him? Or was he Ives all along? Director Antonia Bird says Ives is his real name, and the Reverend was a false identity. Conversely, screenwriter Ted Griffin has literally said he doesn't know one way or the other, and that the audience can make up their own minds.
• Throw It In!: Due to the film changing pretty radically during production a lot of dialogue is improvised including Ives and Boyd's death scene which they also choreographed and performed, Ives's line "Breakfast, lunch, reinforcements", Colonel Hart's explanation of what happened in the cave, and a scene where Reich explains why he got sent to Fort Spencer which wound up being deleted. Also everything Robert Carlyle is doing in front of the cave he just made up on the spot.
• Troubled Production:
  • They went through a few different key crew members, the weather didn't cooperate, and they didn't have the time/money to shoot a lot of what was in the script, and the screenwriter went back home early in the shooting schedule. Needless to say, the actors had to do a lot of improvising.
  • The final fight had to be paused mid-production because they had used all the fake blood in Slovakia.
  • The original director Milcho Manchevski was fired just two weeks into shooting. The studio tried to replace him with Raja Gosnell whose only previous direction credit was Home Alone 3. The main cast came close to quitting under Gosnell. Robert Carlyle reached out to Antonia Bird, who he had worked together with previously in British indie films, and convinced her to take up the director's seat.
• What Could Have Been: According to one of the sound supervisors on the film: "This may tickle you - we had to come up with a funny line for Boyd at one point - these were some of the suggestions:

HART
You got a hobby, Boyd?
BOYD
Swimming.
HART
(drily)
Well, we’re having the pool cleaned at the moment...
You could give us all lessons while you’re here...
The Army gets it right again!
General Slauson must really hate you.
Best of luck!
You’ll need a fur swimsuit...
I don’t think we have any towels...
The nearest lake’s only 200 miles away...
I’ll stick to reading.
We have a well in the courtyard...
There’s a nice beaver dam up in the hills...
Well, the river should thaw in about three months...
I saw you brought your trunks.
The pool’s shut, but our opera house is very nice.
Ah, yes - I remember “swimming”.
Swimming? Nobody here even bathes!
Any spare water up here goes into the whisky.
Yes, there had to be some reason they’d send you here.
My uncle Lou drowned in a horse-trough, once...
Well, that finishes that conversation...
I haven’t even seen a birdbath in six years...
You’re a man who likes a challenge, I see.

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