Trivia / The Alamo (2004)

• Box Office Bomb: It had a $145 million budget, but only grossed just less than $26 million in theaters despite support from Texan critics.
• The Cast Showoff: Billy Bob Thornton learned to play the violin for some scenes that required it.
• Creator Killer:
  • The film was one of several bombs that year that mixed together with Roy E. Disney's second Save Disney campaign and general turmoil at The Walt Disney Company to bring CEO Michael Eisner's 21-year long reign to an end. Eisner was forced out the year after this film's release to allow president Bob Iger to keep Pixar in their family.
  • It also raised a serious red flag to director John Lee Hancock's career, since he did not have another screen credit until The Blind Side in 2009, which resurrected his career for his next Disney movie, Saving Mr. Banks.
  • Lastly, it reburied screenwriter Leslie Bohem's cinematic career after 1997's Dante's Peak killed it the first time. Like with Dante's Peak, Bohem would have to wait 7 years for his next film credit.
• Deleted Role: The role of Susanna Dickinson, the only adult Anglo survivor of the siege and the mother of the only child Anglo survivor, was much larger in the script than what it ended up being in the final version of the film. The role was one of the major roles in the script and Laura Clifton was the only female member of the permanent cast for the film. After Disney finished editing the theatrical release of the film, the character has only one line (screaming for her husband, Almaron Dickinson, during a cattle stampede) and a few appearances in other scenes (during Travis' speech and in the chapel during the siege) and is not even identified anywhere in the movie so that audiences would know who this significant figure in Texas history was. In fact, the role, far from being Laura Clifton's big break, actually hurt her career because of how insignificant it ended up being in the theatrical release.
• Release Date Change: Disney had originally planned to release the film at Christmas 2003 but revised the date, citing that director John Lee Hancock was still working on the film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Ron Howard was originally set to direct, with Russell Crowe set to star, but both left the film when Howard and Disney had a major disagreement over the film's budget (Howard had sought $200 million).
  • Ethan Hawke was up for the role of William Barett Travis but eventually dropped out.

---