Trivia / The New World (2005)

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $30 million. Box office, $12.7 million (domestic), $30.5 million (worldwide).
• Creator Backlash: Christopher Plummer was infuriated after watching the final cut of the movie and discovering that key scenes had been cut and one of his important speeches had been reduced to background noise. He vowed never to work with Terrence Malick again.
• Cut Song: James Horner wrote an original song with Glen Ballard known as "Listen to the Wind" that was going to be played over the end credits, but it was not used.
• The Danza: Christopher Plummer plays Captain Christopher Newport, Eddie Marsan plays a character named Eddie, Ben Mendelsohn plays Benjamin Best, and John Savage plays Thomas Savage.
• Dyeing for Your Art: All actors were required to lose 20 pounds in a month and then went to boot camp where they learned to use artillery weapons and live like the settlers.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • To elicit a more authentic performance, Terrence Malick forbade Colin Farrell and Q'orianka Kilcher from seeing each other prior to filming their first scene. They did accidentally run into each other prior to filming, Kilcher simply turned and walked away.
  • Malick instructed actors to remain in-costume and in-character between takes. On his breaks, Christian Bale would even sit in John Rolfe's chair and smoke a pipe, and Q'orianka Kilcher did Algonquian dances.
• Fake Brit: The cast includes:
  • Irish: Colin Farrell (John Smith), Brían F. O'Byrne (John Lewes)
  • Canadian: Christopher Plummer (Captain Newport)
  • Australian: Ben Mendelsohn (Benjamin Best)
  • Dutch: Yorick van Wageningen (Samuel Argall)
  • American: John Savage (Thomas Savage)
• Fake Nationality: Largely averted by the actors playing the Native characters, since all of them are Native American or First Nations, though none of them are Algonquin. Q'orianka Kilcher is Quechua-Huachipaeri, August Schellenberg was Mohawk/Swiss German, Wes Studi is Cherokee, Raoul Trujillo is Apache/Ute/Comanche/Pueblo/Tlaxcaltec/Métis/Spanish/Sephardic/Moorish, Irene Bedard is Inupiaq/Yupik/Inuk/Métis/Néhinaw, Thomas Clair is Mi'kmaq, and Michael Greyeyes is Néhinaw.
• Looping Lines: Virtually almost all dialog was dubbed in post-production. The main reason was that during takes, Terrence Malick's voice is often heard at the background.
• Saved from Development Hell: Terrence Malick finished the script in the late 1970s.

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