Where to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Trivia & production notes

• Stanley Kubrick pitched his next project after Dr. Strangelove as a serious science fiction film exploring extraterrestrial life, aiming to make what he called the definitive good sci-fi movie.
• Kubrick secured MGM financing partly by promising the film would be shot in Cinerama, the ultra-widescreen format MGM had recently used for How the West Was Won.
• The film was shot almost entirely in southern England at MGM-British Studios and Shepperton Studios, where Kubrick lived, with the production structured to qualify for the Eady Levy, a UK tax incentive for British film production.
• Kubrick met Arthur C. Clarke for the first time on April 22, 1964, at Trader Vic's in New York to discuss the film project, after initially believing Clarke to be a recluse living in a tree.
• Kubrick initially wanted to adapt Clarke's novel Childhood's End but the film rights were already optioned by director Abraham Polonsky, so Clarke offered him six of his short stories instead, with The Sentinel ultimately chosen as the source material.
• The film went through multiple working titles including Journey Beyond The Stars, Universe, Tunnel to the Stars, and Planetfall before Kubrick settled on 2001: A Space Odyssey in April 1965, drawing inspiration from Homer's The Odyssey.
• Kubrick and Clarke developed the screenplay and novel in parallel rather than writing the book first as originally planned, resulting in the film being released before the published novel.
• Kubrick made the film deliberately cryptic by minimizing dialogue and explanation, while Clarke incorporated much more explicit explanations of the monolith and Star Gate into the novel version.
• Carl Sagan consulted with Kubrick and Clarke in 1964, arguing that depicting aliens as humanoid would introduce falseness and recommending instead that the film merely suggest the existence of extraterrestrial superintelligence.
• HAL 9000 was originally designed as a female character named Athena after the Greek goddess of wisdom before being changed to a male character with the name HAL.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article 2001: A Space Odyssey, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.