Where to watch True Grit (2010)

Trivia & production notes

• The Coen brothers cast 13-year-old Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross from a pool of 15,000 applicants after holding open casting sessions in Texas.
• Ethan Coen emphasized that recasting Mattie Ross would have killed the entire project, acknowledging the immense pressure of finding an unknown child actor for the lead role.
• The 2010 adaptation is told entirely from the perspective of the 14-year-old protagonist, whereas the 1969 film version lost much of the novel's humor and darker tone.
• The film includes a scene of Mattie negotiating over her father's casket and sleeping among corpses to avoid hotel fees, a sequence that does not appear in the original novel.
• Ruth Morris, a 29-year-old social worker born without a left forearm, was cast as the body double for the adult Mattie Ross in the film's final segment after a nationwide search.
• Production shot in the Santa Fe area from March to April 2010, with additional filming in Texas towns including Bartlett, Granger, and Austin.
• The 1887 hymn 'Leaning on the Everlasting Arms' serves as Mattie Ross's theme and comprises roughly a quarter of the film's score.
• The score was deemed ineligible for a Best Original Score Oscar nomination in 2011 because it incorporates pre-composed hymns rather than entirely original music.
• Natalia Dyer, who would later star in Stranger Things, was reportedly one of the top candidates for the role of Mattie Ross before the part went to Steinfeld.
• Johnny Cash's recording of 'God's Gonna Cut You Down' was featured in the film's theatrical trailer.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article True Grit (2010 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.