60 Bureaucratic Facts about Hollywood Film Studios

Columbia Pictures was doubtful that Kevin Bacon was attractive enough to play the lead role in Footloose (1984). Then-studio-head Dawn Steel went around the lot flashing a photo of Bacon asking, "is he f*ckable?"

2. 20th Century Fox was convinced that Star Wars was going to be a flop and therefore agreed to George Lucas’ proposition to forgo an additional $500,000 directing fee in return to keep licensing and merchandising rights of the movie for himself. This decision cost Fox billions and made George Lucas a billionaire.

3. When Miramax tried to edit Studio Ghibli's Princess Mononoke, the producers reminded Miramax of their no edits policy by mailing a katana with the words "No cuts."

4. Universal Studios, United Artists, and Disney rejected to get involved with "Star Wars" due to budgetary concerns and believed that it wouldn’t succeed due to being too strange. Only 20th Century Fox agreed because they wanted to form relations with George Lucas after his success with "American Graffiti."

5. When "Sleepless in Seattle" opened in 1993, TriStar Pictures got an average of 25-30 calls a day from viewers demanding to know about Tom Hanks' tiramisu reference. When told it was just food; a lot of the callers didn't believe it, others sounded a little disappointed and some just went 'no way.'

Two separate test screenings were done by Warner Bros for the 1994 animated movie "Thumbelina." The audience reaction fell flat during the first screening. The test scores surprisingly soared for the second screening after they prefaced the exact same footage with Walt Disney logo.

7. During the production of "Toy Story 2", Pixar accidentally deleted the entire movie from its servers. The movie was saved by an employee, a new mother, who worked from home and had the data saved on her personal computer.

8. When Disney bought Lucasfilm, they also gained access to the "Holocron" created by Lucas. It contains lists of "17,000 characters in the Star Wars universe inhabiting several thousand planets over a span of more than 20,000 years."

9. Marvel Studios was confident that Russo brothers could direct Captain America: The Winter Soldier after watching the paintball episode of Community, which they directed.

10. 20th Century Fox made so much money off of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi that they were looking for a tax write-off, so they paid for the entirety of a film with little faith behind it. That movie was Revenge of the Nerds.

DreamWorks consulted over 300 religious’ experts for The Prince of Egypt. This included biblical scholars, theologians, archaeologists, Egyptologists, clergy, and different religious leaders.

12. Universal Pictures nearly greenlit a sequel to Jaws called, "Jaws 3, People 0", a screwball comedy written by John Hughes. Instead, they made Jaws 3-D, which bombed with critics and at the box office.

13. Disney recalled 3.4 million copies of the children's movie "The Rescuers" because one of the animators inserted a picture of a nude woman into two frames of the movie.

14. In the 1930s, Warner Bros. was looking for an effective way to promote its music catalog. They settled on making animated shorts set to their music, calling it "Looney Tunes."

15. Columbia Pictures put a lot of pressure on the makers of "Men in Black" to produce a music video to help the movie succeed. Just weeks before the film’s release, Will Smith devised a last-minute idea to do a dance-off with a CGI alien. Smith spent late nights learning the steps and they shot it in 4 days.

Warner Bros. donates royalties made from their 'Tasmanian Devil' character to help fight a facial tumor that is decimating the native species of Tasmanian Devil.

17. 48 hours before Deadpool was greenlit by 20th Century Fox, the studio cut the film's budget by $7-8 million down to $58 million. Numerous changes were made such as having Deadpool forget his bag of guns before the final battle sequence to avoid a costly gun fight in the third act.

18. Pixar spent three years studying the physics of curly hair in order to correctly render Merida's hair in "Brave."

19. In 1999, Columbia Pictures, owned by Sony, relinquished its rights to create 007 films and in return acquired the rights to Spider-Man from MGM for a mere $10 million. Since then, the Spider-Man films have grossed over $6.3 billion at the box office.

20. When Warner Bros. executives suggested adding a third character to "Pinky and The Brain," writers responded to the unwanted input with the episode "Pinky & The Brain And... Larry," which featured a third, superfluous mouse named Larry that added nothing to the plot but repeatedly said "I'm Larry."

About 40,000 films were destroyed during the Fox vault fire of 1937. 75% of all 20th Century Fox films from before 1930 were lost. There are actors of whom not a single copy of a single one of their films survives.

22. Disney originally wanted ABBA to do the soundtrack for 'The Lion King'. Later when ABBA said they weren't available, they asked Elton John.

23. For close to a decade, Universal Pictures didn't know it owned the merchandising rights to the film Darkman (1990). It wasn't until toy-maker SOTA asked for a license to make a Darkman action figure that Universal finally looked into it and found out it had owned the rights all along.

24. Studio executives at 20th Century Fox weren't happy with the footage that was shot for "Office Space", saying "More energy! More energy! We got to reshoot it! You're failing! You're failing!" They also weren't fans of the gangster rap music used in the film until a focus group approved it.

25. Warner Bros. sued an Indian film called "Hari Puttar" and lost. Two reasons the court ruled against Warner Brothers is because "Hari" is a Hindi word with religious connotations and "Puttar" is a Hindi word for son. The film was about a boy who was left "Home Alone."