Where to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Trivia & production notes

• Lawrence Kasdan was hired to write the script despite having been a professional screenwriter for only one month, after George Lucas read his Continental Divide screenplay and approved the hire.
• Lucas, Kasdan, and Spielberg spent nine hours a day over three to five days developing the film's outline in January 1978 at Lucas's assistant's house in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles.
• Spielberg rejected the character name Indiana Smith because he thought it would evoke the Steve McQueen character Nevada Smith, leading all three filmmakers to agree on the surname Jones instead.
• Several Hollywood studios rejected the project due to the $20 million budget and Lucas's unusual deal terms: he wanted creative control, retained licensing rights and sequel control, and the studio would provide only the funding.
• Paramount Pictures president Michael Eisner compromised with Lucas by accepting his creative control demands in exchange for exclusive sequel rights and steep penalties if the film exceeded its schedule or budget.
• Tom Selleck was cast as Indiana Jones but had to withdraw because CBS greenlit Magnum, P.I. as a full series, forcing him to honor his contractual obligations to the television show.
• Harrison Ford negotiated a seven-figure salary, a percentage of the gross profits, and the right to rewrite his dialogue for the role of Indiana Jones.
• Harrison Ford trained for several weeks under stunt coordinator Glenn Randall to become proficient with a bullwhip, becoming skilled enough to disarm an actor during a specific scene.
• Over 80% of the script was storyboarded with approximately 6,000 images to help Spielberg pre-visualize scenes and reduce setup time on set.
• Spielberg abandoned his original idea of giving the villain Toht a mechanical arm with interchangeable weapons because Lucas felt it would shift the film into a different genre.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Raiders of the Lost Ark, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.