Inside the Studios: 35 Fascinating Facts About Hollywood Film Studios

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

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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."

5. Disney was planning to buy Twitter but then decided to cancel the deal because of the “nastiness” of the social media platform.

In 1937, MGM covered up the brutal rape of dancer Patricia Douglas and ruined her reputation and her life.

7. DreamWorks hired 120 former NASA scientists to help them develop technology for films such as "Home," "Rise of the Guardians," "Kung Fu Panda 2," and "How To Train Your Dragon 2."

8. The mountain in the Paramount Pictures logo is a real mountain named "Artesonraju" in Peru, and not simply an artist's depiction of a mountain.

9. It took Pixar 29 hours to render a single frame from Monsters University. If done on a single CPU it would have taken 10,000 years to finish.

10. Columbia Pictures' contract with the Three Stooges shut the actors out of royalties. Instead, despite headlining in 190 comedy shorts, the Stooges made much of their money doing live shows. When show business slowed down, lead Stooge Moe Howard sold real estate.

Warner Bros. canceled 'Home Alone' because they didn't want to spend $14.7 million on it. 21st Century Fox continued the production and the film grossed $476 million worldwide.

12. Miramax was owned by Disney from 1993 to 2005, which means that Pulp Fiction was, in a way, a Disney movie.

13. While shooting ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ MGM studio placed 16-year-old Judy Garland on a diet of chicken soup, black coffee, cigarettes, and amphetamines to keep her appetite under control.

14. Warner Bros. spent $10 million on a "Mr. Limpet" remake starring Jim Carrey, only to abandon the project when the animation tests were deemed "horrifying."

15. In 1947, MGM produced ‘The Cat Concerto’ and Warner Bros released a similar Bugs Bunny cartoon, ‘Rhapsody Rabbit’. Both used identical gags, the same piece by Franz Liszt, and similar endings. Both MGM and Warner Bros. accused each other of plagiarism after both films were submitted for an Academy Awards ceremony.

When Lionsgate executives announced that Leonardo DiCaprio would be playing the lead in American Psycho, the movie's director refused to this rumor by saying, "Leonardo wasn't remotely right [...] He's not credible as one of these tough Wall Street guys."

17. Universal Pictures failed to include a (c) in the credits of the 1963 Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn movie 'Charade'. As a result, the film entered the public domain upon release in theaters.

18. Warner Bros. lacked confidence in 2014's "The Lego Movie". Due to this, they offered Village Roadshow Pictures the opportunity to finance 25% of the film, and later, an additional 25%.

19. Miramax refused to finance 'Chasing Amy' unless Kevin Smith cast Jon Stewart or David Schwimmer in Ben Affleck's role and Drew Barrymore in Joey Lauren Adams' role. So, Kevin Smith financed the movie himself and sold the distribution rights to Miramax.

20. Paramount Pictures was apprehensive about 3 first-time directors working on the 1980s movie "Airplane!". The contract said they could fire them after 1 week. When Paramount Pictures saw how the "Don’t call me Shirley" joke played out on the first day of shooting, they were relieved.

In mid of 2000, a Columbia Pictures executive made a pseudonym called David Manning, a film critic who gave positive reviews to 4 films. It was later revealed that Manning wasn't a real film critic, and in 2005, Sony agreed to refund $5 from unsatisfied movie-goers who trusted his reviews.

22. In 1936, MGM studios canceled the production of "It Can't Happen Here", a movie about the rise of a popular Hitler-like politician in America for fear of losing revenue from Nazi Germany.

23. Universal Pictures was so worried about the complex plot of David Lynch's Dune that they handed out a glossary with movie tickets.

24. In 1984, Warner Bros. almost closed down the DC Comics publishing imprint and licensed the characters to Marvel. Marvel apparently declined, thinking that the reason DC was failing was the characters, not the management, and did not consider the characters profitable.

25. Warner Bros. studios didn't like the idea of Jack Nicholson's character dying in Mars Attacks, so Tim Burton gave Nicholson two different characters and killed both of them.