Where to watch The Last Emperor (1987)

Trivia & production notes

• The Forbidden City had never been opened to a Western film production before Bertolucci received permission to shoot there for the first 90 minutes and ending of the film.
• Producer Jeremy Thomas single-handedly raised the $25 million budget for the independent production, at one point searching phone books to find potential financiers.
• The film required 19,000 extras over its course of shooting, prompting the People's Liberation Army to be drafted in to accommodate the demand.
• Bernardo Bertolucci worked with young Chinese directors including Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou to prepare them for filming the Cultural Revolution scene, during which they emotionally acted out their own experiences with the period.
• Columbia Pictures was initially reluctant to distribute the film in North America and only agreed to do so after shooting was completed.
• The Last Emperor did not enter the US weekend box office top 10 until its twelfth week, when it jumped to number 7 and increased its gross by 168% the same week it received a Best Picture nomination.
• Shochiku Fuji Company removed a thirty-second sequence depicting the Rape of Nanjing before the film's Japanese theatrical release without Bertolucci's consent, calling the sequence too sensational for Japanese audiences before quickly restoring it.
• The Criterion Collection released a four-disc Director-Approved edition on Blu-ray in January 2009, containing both theatrical and extended versions under license from producer Jeremy Thomas.
• The film was converted to 3D and screened in the Cannes Classics section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Last Emperor, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.