Trivia / The Menu

• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • Anya-Taylor Joy came up with the idea of Margot punching Tyler after finding out that he knew all along that everyone was going to die.
  • Actress Aimee Carrero revealed that director Mark Mylod offered each of the actors one "freebie" take after securing a scripted take, in which he encouraged the actors to improvise material, which is also how Slowik's "Taco Tuesday" line ended up in the final cut.
• Fake American: English actors Ralph Fiennes, Janet McTeer, and Nicholas Hoult as well as English-Argentine actress Anya Taylor-Joy all play Americans.
• The Red Stapler: The cheeseburger scene often led moviegoers to head to the nearest restaurant or fast food joint first thing after watching the film, and order one with fries to satisfy their cravings.
• Reality Subtext: One of the film writers, Will Tracy, dined at Cornelius Sjømatrestaurant during a honeymoon, and later helped Seth Reiss to inspire his surprising event into the film story.
• Referenced by...: Binging with Babish reproduced the "Tyler's Bullshit" recipe, and then used the same ingredients to make something that could have come out of a high-end kitchen.
• Vindicated by Cable: While it by no means bombed in theaters, it gained a lot more mainstream attention once it was added to HBO Max in January 2023, which also coincided with the movie being nominated for several awards at the Golden Globes.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The film was part of the Black List of 2019, a yearly survey put out by entertainment executive Franklin Leonard to identify the hottest unproduced screenplays floating around Hollywood. From its appearance on the list to the finished product three years later, the script went through some changes:
    • In the film, Margot is revealed to be an escort named Erin, standing in for Tyler's ex-girlfriend. In the script, Margot and Tyler (they were named Craig) really are a couple, and a married one at that.
    • The movie star was written to be Daniel Radcliffe As Himself, with the movie Chef Julian hated being Victor Frankenstein. The part eventually went to John Leguizamo as fictional celebrity George Diaz. Had Radcliffe been cast, this would have added an extra layer of intrigue since Julian is played by Ralph Fiennes who also played the arch-enemy of Radcliffe's most famous role.
    • The script has a camera crew filming the evening's events.
    • Instead of letting the men loose into the woods to be hunted down, Katherine's course was called "Humiliation", which consisted of the male diners being made to eat from dog bowls nude from the waist down. This might have been changed as it would change the movie from a black horror comedy to torture porn and put similarity too close for comfort against another controversial satire about the upper class.
    • Instead of hanging himself after being insulted by Slowik, a broken Tyler/Craig instead took up Slowik's offer to "learn" and spent the rest of the dinner washing dishes, even ignoring Margot's attempt to get him to leave with her.
    • The script features an alternate ending where a crew of firefighters and investigators walk through the burnt wreckage of the night and, behind a sealed fireproof door, find Slowik's smiling severed head on a platter and his severed hands holding up the titular menu.
  • Emma Stone was initially cast as Margot before dropping out due to scheduling conflicts. Alexander Payne was the attached director.
  • An entire course from the script ("Gone Nuts") was cut. It would've included a chaotic scene in the restaurant while Margot is retrieving the barrel. In the scene, Felicity is forced to feed George peanuts, (to which he is allergic) and Lillian is waterboarded by the broken emulsion that's taken out and shown to her. It's possible that the latter part was filmed, as Lillian's hair is inexplicably wet in the final scene.

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