When the Mother-Ship passes over the Devil’s Tower near the end of Spielberg’s movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, R2-D2 can be seen hanging from the bottom of the ship.In the movie E.T. there is a scene where the young boy lures the extraterrestrial with some Reese’s pieces. Originally Spielberg was going to use M+M’s, but he could not get the rights. Reese’s pieces were the replacement.

The Godfather was the first movie in over twenty years in which Marlon Brando was required to audition.

“Halloween” was originally going to be titled “The Babysitter Murders”.

The Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie were named after the cop and the taxi driver from the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

The mechanical shark used in the movie Jaws was nicknamed Bruce, named after Spielberg’s lawyer.

When the T-Rex devours the traffic light in San Diego within the movie “The Lost Word: Jurassic Park”, there is a sign close by that reads “No Dinosaurs”.

After reading the script for Men in Black, Will Smith did not want any part of the movie. It was wife Jada that persuaded him to take the part.

Midnight Cowboy was the first non-pornographic movie to receive a X rating.

For the movie the Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland was paid $35 a week while Toto received $125 a week.

The producers of the movie Gone With The Wind were fined 5,000 dollars for allowing the word “damn” to be heard within the movie‘s dialog.

Brooke Shields spent a lot of time during the filming of Blue Lagoon standing/walking in a trench beside Chris Atkins so that she wouldn’t be taller than him in the scenes that they had together.

The Blues Brothers once held the record for crashing the most police cars in a movie at approximately 30. The record was eventually broken by Blues Brothers 2000.

During filming of the chariot race scene in the movie Ben-Hur, one of the cameras was completely ruined when a chariot ran over it. The footage right up to the camera’s obliteration was used in the final film.

Near the beginning of the movie Back To The Future there’s a scene where they show all of the clocks at Doc’s house. If you look closely there is one clock with a little man hanging from the minute hand.

In Carrie, the slow motion scene at the end of the movie was filmed in reverse to simulate ghostlike movement effects. If watched vigilantly, cars can be seen driving backwards in the upper left hand corner of the screen.

Bogart never said “Play it again Sam” in the movie Casablanca. What Bogart did say was “Play it Sam”.

Orson Welles was only 21 years old when here starred in & directed in the movie Citizen Kane.

Hitchcock used chocolate syrup to portray the blood seen in the shower scene for his classic film Psycho.

Over 1,400 actresses were interviewed to play the part of Scarlett O’Hara for the movie Gone with the Wind.

The first toilet being flushed in a motion picture was in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Psycho.

In the James Bond movie “For Your Eyes Only” one of the bond girls used to be a man.

The longest Hollywood kiss was from the 1941 film, “You’re in the Army Now”. It lasted for three minutes and three seconds.

Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” was the first animated film to be nominated for an Oscar for best picture.

Liverpool is the most filmed British city.

Bruce Lee was so fast, that they actually had to slow a film down so you could see his moves.

Rolling Stone Keith Richards was set to make a cameo appearance as the father of Captain Jack Sparrow, in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, a commitment he could not keep.

1.    After her unfortunate hair-gel incident in There’s Something About Mary, Cameron Diaz noticed a sudden increase in the number of male strangers that would approach her and offer to supply her with hair care products.2.    On Leonardo DiCaprio’s first date, he was so shy that he couldn’t look his date in the eye!

3.    Stunt coordinator Simon Crane exited the tail of a DC-9 at 15,000 feet and slid down a connecting rope to the open door of a smaller JetStar plane for the production of the Sylvester Stallone film Cliffhanger (1993). It was the greatest one-man aerial stunt ever performed in cinematic history.

4.    Audiences named “seeing Halle Berry’s naked breasts” the best thing about the movie Swordfish. When asked what that said about the rest of the movie, Berry replied, “That says that my boobs are pretty f—ing incredible!”

5.    Tommy Lee Jones hates clothing labels. During production of Men in Black II, his publicist assembled the entire crew and told them to get rid of all t-shirts and any visible clothing labels, because if Jones saw them he would walk off the set.

6.    When watching Raiders of the Lost Ark on home video nearly 30 years ago, Steven Spielberg was so irritated at the “pan & scan” method of showing feature films on television sets (where the square TV screen will pan from left to right on the original film as needed to show the important action) that he experienced a fit of anger and invented widescreen.

7.    Did you ever hear that rumor that Sylvester Stallone started his acting career in a 1970’s adult film called The Italian Stallion? Not only is it true, but he was paid a whopping $200 for his performance!

8.    Ever wonder what the most expensive movie ever made was? Titanic cost $200,000,000 and doesn’t come close. Neither does the $300,000,000 Spiderman 3. Believe it or not, the most expensive movie ever made was the 1968 Soviet-produced adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace which, when adjusted for inflation, cost more than $700,000,000 to make.

9.    Eli Roth, director of blood-soaked horror films like Cabin Fever, Hostel, and Hostel II, faints at the sight of real blood! Movie blood, for some reason, has no effect on him.

10.    Here are the five movies with the highest measurable body counts ever (discounting, obviously, movies that show global destruction like War of the Worlds or Independence Day) – Grindhouse: Double Feature – 310 deaths, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – 468 deaths, Troy – 572 deaths, 300 – 600 deaths, and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King comes in at #1 with 836 deaths. That’s nearly four deaths a minute for more than four hours! Go Peter Jackson!

11.    The original title for “50 Amazing Movie Facts” was “101 Amazing Movie Facts,” but then I discovered the difficulty involved in amassing that many amazing facts!

12.    If you read 50 Amazing Movie Facts Vol. 1 this might sound familiar, but it bears repeating. Jean Claude Van-Damme speaks five languages!!

13.    M&M’s were the original choice for the candy to be used in E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, but Reese’s Pieces were used instead because Mars Incorporated, the M&M’s parent company, didn’t want their candy associated with aliens and UFOs. The placement of Resse’s Pieces in the movie went on to become one of the most wildly successful instances of product placement in film history. Oops!

14.    Steven Spielberg dropped out of college in 1968 to concentrate on his film career. In the early 2000’s, he went back to fulfill his dream and graduate, fulfilling the various correspondence courses and term papers required to obtain his degree. One of the requirements was that each Film Major must submit a finished film of at least 12 minutes in length, so Spielberg submitted Schindler’s List. During the graduation ceremony, the orchestra played the theme song from Indiana Jones as he walked across the stage.

15.    Entertainment Weekly claims that Tom Hanks is the only actor alive worthy of $20 million.

16.    Contrary to popular belief, and as a matter of simple logic, actors are not overpaid unless the movie bombs at the box office.

17.    For the scene in the 007 film From Russia with Love (1963) where Bond and the leading lady Tatiana Romanova escape onto the Orient Express, there were so many people trying to watch the filming of the scene and ruining takes that director Terence Young had one of his stunt men pretend to hang himself to distract the crowds enough so that the scene could be filmed.

18.    Sylvester Stallone has that unique look about his face because of birth complications “caused by forceps.” And on an unrelated note, in high school he was voted “most likely to end up in the electric chair.”

19.    Johannas Heesters has had the longest acting career ever, and is also the oldest actor to ever appear in a movie, and now remains the oldest actor alive anywhere in the world. His first film was called Cirque hollandais (1924), and when he appeared in the yet to be released 1 1/2 Knights: In Search of the Ravishing Princess Herzelinde (2008), he was 104 years old. Incidentally, he was also Adolf Hitler’s favorite actor…

20.    In the late 1970’s, Stanley Kubrick was sorting through novels at his home trying to find one that would make a good movie, and from the other room, his wife would hear a pounding noise every half hour or so as he threw books against the wall in frustration. Finally, she didn’t hear any noise for almost two hours, and when she went to check on him she found him reading “The Shining.”

21.    A single, charming man named Ed Gein was the main inspiration for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Norman Bates from Psycho (1960). Sounds like a fun guy!

22.    The original tagline for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) was “The War Begins 2003,” but the phrase was removed from all promotional material when it turned out to really be true…

23.    The first preview for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was played in November 1998 before the Adam Sandler film The Waterboy. Many Star Wars fans who were not Sandler fans paid the full admission price, watched the Star Wars trailer, and then left the theater.

24.    Hulk Hogan has three movies on the Internet Movie Database’s list of the 100 worst films of all time. Before getting into professional wrestling and, ah, “acting,” he majored in business management.

25.    Robocop (1987) was the first film ever given an “X” rating not because of sexual content or pervasive nudity, but because of extreme violence. It was re-edited to get the R rating.

26.    Cheech and Chong originally called themselves Spic and Span, but they changed their names because “Spic” was not so popular with Chicano organizations.

27.    A young boy named Ronald Hunkeler was the subject of a real life exorcism in the 1940s and was the inspiration for William Peter Blatty’s novel “The Exorcist.” He was “cured” and ultimately went on to become a NASA scientist.

28.    The archaeological dig sight at the beginning of The Exorcist is a real site in Hatra, Iraq. An all-British film crew were used because the U.S. had no diplomatic relations with Iraq at that time. They were allowed to film only on the condition that they would teach Iraqi filmmakers how to do special effects.

29.    At the end of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, one of the movie’s most climactic moments involves the lid sliding off of an enormous stone coffin. The sound effects guy made the sound for that scene by sliding the lid across the tank of his toilet. Try it!

30.    Ever hear the James Bond theme played with machine guns? In License To Kill (1989), there is a scene where Bond is in a petrol tanker being chased by the bad guys. They shoot at him with machine guns, and if you listen carefully you can hear the Bond theme being played by the sounds of the bullets hitting the tanker.

31.    Relative to the rest of the movie, Total Recall (1990) has the cheesiest ending of any American film ever made.

32.    The f-bomb is dropped 186 times in the movie Superbad (2007). That’s more than in the infamous Scarface (1983), which provided the number for which Blink-182 named their band.

33.    Julia Roberts was originally cast in the role of Viola in Shakespeare in Love (1989). Am I the only person who can’t imagine Julia Roberts doing Shakespeare? Maybe not, because she flew to the UK to persuade Daniel Day-Lewis to take the lead role of Shakespeare, but when he turned it down to do In the Name of the Father (1993) instead, Universal dropped the Shakespeare project until Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow signed on 6 years later.

34.    Oh and speaking of Shakespeare, get this, the first case of the “common cold” was diagnosed in 1611 in Stratford, England (Shakespeare’s hometown) in a patient named John Common. Coincidentally, Common gave his cold to Shakespeare, who said that the malady exacerbated his love-sickness and thus inspired some of his most fondly remembered sonnets.

35.    I have a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature, but I learned the word “exacerbate” from Shaun of the Dead (2004).36.    William Shatner was half of the first-ever televised interracial kiss, when he kissed African American actress Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura in an original “Star Trek” episode called “Plato’s Stepchildren.” It aired for the first time on November 22nd, 1968, and some TV stations in the American south refused to air the episode on the grounds that the kiss, despite being between two of the good guys in the story (and involuntary), was the moral equivalent of a sexual assault.

37.    An American novelist named Morgan Robertson published a book called “The Wreck of the Titan” about a massive ship that struck an iceberg on it’s maiden voyage and sank on a cold April night. It was published in 1898.  The Titanic sank in 1912.

38.   When Gaff talks to Deckard in the Japanese restaurant in Blade Runner, he says this line in Hungarian, “Azonnal kövessen engem,” which means “Follow me immediately,” and then he says, “Lófasz” which can mean both “bullshit” and “no way,” but the literal translation is “horse penis.” Evidently, Hungarian moviegoers find this fantastically funny.

39.    Mickey Mouse is named after Mickey Rooney, whose mother dated Walt Disney.

40.    The actual name of the Oscar is the “Academy Award of Merit.” Bette Davis claims that she gave the statue its name after her husband, bandleader Harmon Oscar Nelson. Also, it’s illegal for anyone, including the winners themselves, to ever sell an Oscar statuette without first offering to sell it back to the Academy for $1.

41.    Rocky Balboa was born on July 6, 1945. According to FIrst Blood: Part II (1985), John J. Rambo was born on July 6, 1947. Sylvester Stallone was born July 6, 1946.

42.    J.K. Rowling was a struggling single mother when she started writing her first Harry Potter book. She now has more money than the Queen of England.

43.    Sean Penn called Eddie Vedder to ask him to do the soundtrack for his film Into the Wild, and Vedder agreed on the spot before he knew anything about the film.

44.    The Chinese government has barred Martin Scorsese from ever entering Tibet because they found his 1997 Disney film Kundun too offensive.

45.    Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest and finished third!

46.    The funniest movies ever made, in no particular order, are This Is Spinal Tap (1984), The Blues Brothers (1980), Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Blazing Saddles (1974), Spaceballs (1987), Borat (2006), Dumb & Dumber (1994), Groundhog Day (1993), Army of Darkness (1992), Office Space (1999), The Big Lebowski (1998), and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).

47.    There is a strong possibility that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is the single most hilarious movie ever made. Ironically, excessive quoting of the movie is intensely irritating.

48.    The year after Deliverance was released, 31 people drowned trying to canoe down the treacherous stretch of the Chattanooga River where the movie was filmed. Also, because of budget constraints, local South Carolina and Georgia residents were cast as the mountain people! “Where you goin’, city boy!!”

49.    In The Big Lebowski, The Dude never actually bowls.
Source

Marvel Entertainment Inc raised its film unit’s 2008 revenue outlook following initial payments of $60 million from Viacom’s Paramount Pictures — the distributor of the comic book publisher’s “Iron Man” movie.

Paramount will also distribute Marvel’s next five self-produced feature films across the world, the two companies said in a separate statement.

Marvel expects 2008 revenue from its film production segment between $125 million and $140 million, compared with a prior forecast of $65 million to $80 million, according to a regulatory filing.

The initial payment from Paramount to Marvel was not offset by any production or marketing expenses related to the “Iron Man” DVD release, Marvel, which entered the film-making market with “Iron Man” and “The Incredible Hulk” in the second quarter, said in the regulatory filing.

Under an agreement between the companies, Paramount will distribute a slew of forthcoming movies from the Marvel stable, including “Iron Man 2,” “Thor,” “The First Avenger: Captain America,” and “The Avengers.”

Marvel’s distribution deal with Paramount, which capitalizes on “Iron Man”’s success, will help the latter offset a potential big loss should it lose distribution of DreamWorks films.

Earlier this month, DreamWorks reached a long-expected deal with India’s Reliance ADA Group for $1.2 billion in new financing to leave Paramount and produce movies as an independent studio. But DreamWorks must still reach a film distribution deal with a major Hollywood studio.

Shares of Marvel, which houses a cast of more than 5,000 characters including Spider-Man and X-Men, were down 5 percent at $32.77, while Viacom’s stock was down 7 percent at $23.65 Monday afternoon, both on the New York Stock Exchange.

Actress Kirsten Dunst, who starred in the hit “Spider-Man” movies, has checked into a rehab center in Utah for undisclosed reasons, celebrity Web sites reported on Thursday, citing unidentified sources.

Dunst, 25, was said to have checked into the Cirque Lodge Treatment Center that in recent days has been home to another popular actress, Eva Mendes. Lindsay Lohan also spent time at Cirque Lodge last year when she was experiencing troubles.

People.com cited one source as saying Dunst “is not doing well” and that people around the movie actress had been pushing her to check into a rehab clinic. Web sites for Star magazine and the TV show Entertainment Tonight also carried reports of Dunst checking into the Cirque Lodge.

A spokesman for Dunst was not immediately available to comment.

Dunst is widely known for her role as Mary Jane Watson, the love interest of Spider-Man alter ego Peter Parker, in the box office smash movie franchise.

She rose to fame as a child actress in films such as “Interview With the Vampire,” and recently played French queen Marie Antoinette in director Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette.”