Where to watch The Revenant (2015)

Trivia & production notes

• The Revenant's development began in August 2001 when producer Akiva Goldsman acquired rights to Michael Punke's unpublished manuscript, but the project languished through multiple director and casting changes over nearly a decade.
• Alejandro G. Iñárritu took over as director in August 2011 and immediately began rewriting the script with screenwriter Mark L. Smith, who initially doubted whether some of their envisioned sequences could actually be filmed.
• The production budget nearly tripled during filming, ballooning from the initial $60 million to $135 million by the time principal photography wrapped.
• A scheduled two-week break from filming in December 2014 was extended to six weeks, forcing Tom Hardy to drop out of Suicide Squad.
• Iñárritu shot the entire film using only natural lighting, a technical constraint that meant the crew spent 40 percent of each day traveling to and from remote filming locations.
• When bad weather prevented filming the ending scenes in Canada, the production relocated to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina to find snow on the ground.
• Leonardo DiCaprio endured extreme physical hardships during filming, including being submerged in frozen rivers, sleeping inside animal carcasses, and facing constant risk of hypothermia.
• Multiple crew members quit or were fired during production, prompting director Iñárritu to bring in producer Mary Parent to help stabilize the set.
• The actual Hugh Glass mauling that inspired the story occurred in present-day South Dakota, but the filmmakers chose to shoot in geographically different terrain for their adaptation.
• Industrial Light & Magic served as the primary visual effects company, with support from Moving Picture Company and Cinesite.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Revenant (2015 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.