The Making of Movie Magic: 45 Journey Behind the Scenes

In 2001, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire starred together in a film titled "Don's Plum," but the film was prevented from being distributed in the United States and Canada due to the fact that the actors had only committed to perform in a "short" film and not a "feature" picture. That was the explanation that was provided officially. According to the film's producer, David Stutman, however, Maguire was against the release of the movie because he felt his improvised performance revealed too much about him.

2. Only 29 days after the sinking of the Titanic, the first movie to be made about the ship was released. One of the survivors, who also appeared in the piece and wrote it, suffered a mental breakdown after production wrapped. A fire wiped out the film, and just a handful of stills were saved.

3. A large number of performers were considered for the role of Clark Kent in the 1978 Superman film before they finally settled on Christopher Reeve. Traditional stars like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were among them. They even considered having Muhammad Ali play the role. They even considered casting Elton John, who had never even appeared in a movie before.

4. During the preproduction phase of the film adaptation of "The Crow," executives at Paramount Studios discussed the possibility of converting the picture into a musical starring Michael Jackson. What "The Crow's" creator had to say about the concept is as follows, as heard on the DVD: "In Hollywood, that's the way things work. It's like if there's a lovely tree in the park and all the dogs in the neighbourhood feel compelled to urinate on it."

5. There was a scene in the original script for the first "Star Trek" film written by Gene Roddenberry that saw James T. Kirk getting into a fistfight with an extraterrestrial who had assumed the appearance of Jesus Christ. Some ideas from this script made it into the final cut of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," but the vast majority of it was scrapped.

Tobey Maguire was reportedly under consideration for the part of Officer Hoyt in the 2001 film Training Day. Maguire apparently gained weight and shadowed narcotics officers in Los Angeles to prepare for his role. Nonetheless, Maguire's success as Spider-Man can be somewhat attributed to the filmmaker's choice to not cast him in this movie.

7. Al Michaels reconstructed the play-by-play for the last game of the 1980 US Olympic Men's Hockey Team's triumph against the Russians for the 2004 film "Miracle," with the exception of the final thirty seconds (which used the original audio), since he thought he couldn't duplicate the original emotions of the players. The team's "actors" were, in fact, real hockey players. This made the plays and games look even more real.

8. "Manthan" (1976) was the first Indian film to be funded through a crowdfunding campaign. Verghese Kurien, who initiated the "White Revolution" in India by establishing a dairy cooperative, was the subject of this recent Hindi film. This film is a testament to the power of "collective might," as it was entirely funded by 500,000 dairy farmers who each paid Rs 2.

9. The film adaptation of Titanic, which was released in 1997, grossed close to two billion dollars, which was about five times what it had cost to construct the ship in the first place.

10. During the pre-production phase of The Terminator, the movie studio considered putting O.J. Simpson in the title role; however, James Cameron "did not feel that Simpson would be believable as a killer" and ultimately decided against the idea. The producers too felt that he was "too nice" to be taken seriously in the role of a cold blooded killer.

During production of the 1977 movie "A Bridge Too Far," the Dutch authorities only allowed the Nijmegen Bridge to be closed for filming on Sundays for an hour. As a result of the crew's need to acquire the film in that hour, it became known as the "Million Dollar Hour." The alternative was to pay Robert Redford $125,000 each day to stay on set.

12. "The Power of Love," a silent drama produced in 1922, is considered the first full-length 3D film. By shutting one eye, viewers might select between a happy or tragic climax in 2D. Both the original silent movie and the 2D version that came after it, "Forbidden Lover," are thought to be lost forever.

13. When shooting "Good Burger," the crew often had to throw out the meat they were using because it had gone bad. In addition, the idea for the film Good Burger was first featured in a comedy on the kid-friendly sketch show "All That." The film debuted in theatres two years after the initial sketch.

14. Neil Diamond, who was new to acting when he was cast in "The Jazz Singer" (1980), was having problems performing a scene in which his character was meant to be angry. As a result, he ordered his band to play a Barry Manilow song to make him angry for real during the filming of the scene.

15. When filming "My Left Foot" (1989), Daniel Day-Lewis, who would later win an Academy Award for his performance, stayed completely in character throughout. For the entirety of the shoot, he remained in the wheelchair, and the crew had to help him navigate obstacles by hoisting him. And of course, they had to feed him food too.

The underwater scenes in the 1989 film "The Abyss" were shot on location in a decommissioned nuclear power facility. The set was never taken down when filming concluded. It wasn't torn down until 2007.

17. The actress who played the first victim of the shark attack in Jaws, Susan Backlinie, was not hurt by the harness, as is commonly thought. Instead, her realistic screams came from being scared because she didn't know what was going to happen next.

18. In "Apocalypse Now," the opening shot was reconstructed from scraps of film that were otherwise destined for the landfill. By sheer luck, Coppola stumbled upon it after shooting 1.5 million feet of film. Coppola also instructed the editor to use "The End" by The Doors since he found the idea of opening a film with that song to be amusing.

19. Toho, the company that owns the name "Godzilla," changed the name of the 1998 American movie "Godzilla" to "Zilla" in 2006. This was because the movie "took the "God" out of "Godzilla" by showing the character as a mere animal."

20. For the film "Jaws," the producers opted for a motorless fibreglass boat that could "sink on command" and then resurface. The Orca II was a wooden boat built after the model of the actual wooden Orca used as Quinn's shark-hunting vessel in the last scene of the film. For Orca II to be filled and sunk, pneumatic tubes tipped barrels that were mounted under it.

Three full-time animators worked for two months to produce the three minutes of stop-motion animation that appears during the end credits of The LEGO Movie.

22. The first full-length animated movie was made in Argentina. It was created 20 years before Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," which came out in 1937. It was "El Apóstol," a political satire comprised of 58,000 drawings with a 70-minute runtime.

23. Director Stewart Raffill was approached by a man who had a giant animatronic T-Rex and wanted to get rid of it, and so the idea for the 1994 film Tammy and the T-Rex was born. He approached Raffill with the idea of turning it into a film, and once Raffill gave his blessing, the script was written in a matter of days.

24. Actor John Rhys-Davies, who portrayed Gimli in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, stands at a lofty 6 feet, 1 inch (1.85 metres), towering over his hobbit co-stars, who average about 5 feet, 6 inches (1.68 metres) in height. This made filming considerably simpler.

25. The stars of the "Fast and Furious" films fought hard to get their contract demands met so that their characters could take fewer blows, and they refused to concede defeat. The contracts of actors like Jason Statham, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Vin Diesel limited how much damage their characters could take in fights. Vin Diesel even came up with a way to keep track of all the kicks, punches, and headbutts.