Where to watch Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

Trivia & production notes

• Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu originally conceived Birdman as a comedy shot in a single continuous take, shifting its focus to drama partway through development.
• Iñárritu adopted the one-shot technique because he realized that 'we live our lives with no editing' and wanted to submerge the protagonist in an inescapable reality.
• Early reactions from industry figures to Iñárritu's continuous-shot idea were uniformly discouraging, with he himself describing the technique as 'almost suicidal.'
• The four co-writers—Nicolás Giacobone, Armando Bo, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., and Iñárritu—collaborated mainly through Skype calls and emails from Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and New York.
• An original ending featured Johnny Depp in Riggan's dressing room speaking as Jack Sparrow, which Iñárritu later called 'so embarrassing' and rewrote after envisioning a new ending in a dream.
• The script took about a year and a half to complete because the one-shot approach meant scenes could not be removed or reordered in post-production, requiring writers to be extremely certain about every element on the page.
• Michael Keaton was not Iñárritu's initial choice for the lead, but by the time the script was finished, Iñárritu knew Keaton was 'the guy.'
• When Keaton first learned about Birdman, he was in the middle of another project but flew home to discuss it with Iñárritu after discovering the director was making a new film.
• Fox Searchlight Pictures turned down financing Birdman because they felt Iñárritu's budget request was too high, but reconsidered after New Regency accepted the deal.
• Josh Brolin was initially set to play Mike Shiner but was replaced by Edward Norton due to scheduling conflicts once New Regency and Searchlight joined as financiers.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Birdman (film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.