110 Fun Facts About 2010s Movie

In Inception, what does Cobb use as a totem to test whether he is dreaming?

A spinning top: if it keeps spinning Cobb is dreaming, if it topples he is awake. The final shot cuts away before the top falls.

Which French song is used in Inception to signal the 'kick' that wakes the dreamers?

Non, je ne regrette rien: Édith Piaf's 1960 recording is played to cue the kick, and Hans Zimmer slowed it down to build the film's booming brass motif.

Before making it a heist film, Christopher Nolan first envisioned Inception in which genre?

Horror was Nolan's first idea for his dream-thief story; he then set the project aside for years, feeling he needed experience on bigger productions such as the Batman films.

The Social Network is based on which book?

The Accidental Billionaires, Ben Mezrich's 2009 book on which Eduardo Saverin consulted; Aaron Sorkin adapted it while Zuckerberg and Facebook declined to take part.

Who plays Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin in The Social Network?

Andrew Garfield first met David Fincher about playing Mark Zuckerberg, but Fincher felt his emotional openness suited the betrayed Eduardo Saverin better and gave the lead to Jesse Eisenberg.

Which band's members composed the award-winning score for The Social Network?

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor at first turned David Fincher down, drained after a long tour, then reconsidered and wrote the Oscar-winning score with Atticus Ross.

Toy Story 3 was the first animated film to do what?

Gross $1 billion: Disney first planned a Toy Story 3 without Pixar, about a recalled Buzz shipped to Taiwan, and scrapped it after buying Pixar in 2006. Pixar's own version then made the record.

Where are the toys accidentally donated in Toy Story 3?

Sunnyside Daycare seems a toy paradise until its strawberry-scented boss, Lotso, turns out to run it like a prison and has Andy's toys locked up when they try to leave.

The King's Speech centres on which monarch's struggle with a stammer?

George VI never expected the crown: his brother Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, leaving the stammering Duke of York to become king and address a nation at war.

Why did the writer of The King's Speech delay the project for decades?

The monarch's widow asked him to wait: the Queen Mother's office told David Seidler not to pursue the story in her lifetime, as the memories were still too painful. She died in 2002 and the film followed in 2010.

Bridesmaids was co-written by Annie Mumolo and which of its stars?

Kristen Wiig met Mumolo at the Los Angeles improv troupe the Groundlings, where they wrote sketches together, and Mumolo has a cameo in the film as a nervous flyer beside Annie.

In which city does Bridesmaids' Annie Walker live after her bakery fails?

Milwaukee: after the recession shuts her bakery, Cake Baby, Annie sells jewellery there and shares a flat, while her rich rival bridesmaid Helen lives in style in Chicago.

Who wrote and directed The Avengers (2012)?

Joss Whedon rewrote a script Zak Penn had been developing since 2006, and while Scarlett Johansson's return was in doubt he drafted a pile of pages starring the Wasp instead.

Which alien race does Loki lead against Earth in The Avengers?

The Chitauri pour through a portal above Manhattan, and the whole army collapses the instant Iron Man flies a nuclear missile into their mothership.

The first Hunger Games film (2012) was shot mainly in which state?

North Carolina: the arena is DuPont State Forest and District 12 is the abandoned Henry River Mill Village, and fan tours went on to visit both.

Which studio produced The Hunger Games films?

Lionsgate had not turned a profit in five years, so it pruned the budgets of its other films and looked for assets to sell to pay for the gamble.

Which two Bond regulars returned in Skyfall after being absent for two films?

Moneypenny and Q: Naomie Harris plays a field agent who shoots Bond by accident in the opening and only at the end takes a desk job and gives her surname. Ben Whishaw is the new Q.

Skyfall's production was suspended in 2010 because of what?

MGM's bankruptcy: the studio's money troubles froze Bond 23 through 2010 and writer Peter Morgan walked away. Work resumed only once MGM left Chapter 11 that December.

Argo dramatises the rescue of six US diplomats from which city?

Tehran was where the 'Canadian Caper' played out during the 1979-81 Iran hostage crisis, with a science-fiction shoot as the cover story.

Ben Affleck's Argo won Best Picture, but the Academy famously snubbed it in which category?

Director: Affleck took the Directors Guild, Golden Globe and BAFTA directing prizes that season, yet the Academy left him out, a first for a Best Picture winner since Driving Miss Daisy.

Disney's Frozen (2013) was loosely inspired by which 1844 Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale?

The Snow Queen: Elsa was the villain in early drafts until the song Let It Go recast her as a frightened young woman, and the first act was rewritten around two sisters.

Which songwriting team wrote the songs for Frozen, including Let It Go?

Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez found Let It Go on a walk to Brooklyn's Prospect Park, where she climbed onto a picnic table and pictured it as Elsa's mountaintop.

Gravity's almost entirely digital space scenes were created by which British visual effects company?

Framestore built nearly everything on screen by computer, so Sandra Bullock performed inside a cramped box of LED panels that lit her face with the scenes to be added later.

12 Years a Slave was based on whose 1853 memoir?

Solomon Northup, a free Black New Yorker kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana, published his memoir in 1853; Chiwetel Ejiofor played him.

The Wolf of Wall Street set a record for what?

Uses of a particular expletive: the F-word is heard more than 500 times, which set a Guinness record for swearing in a film, and Kenya's censors banned it outright.

Whiplash grew out of an 18-minute short film that premiered at which festival?

Sundance: producers dared Damien Chazelle to film a slice of his script as a short, and its jury prize there won the backing to shoot the full feature.

Interstellar was developed from a treatment by producer Lynda Obst and which theoretical physicist?

Kip Thorne's equations drove the film's black hole images, which proved accurate enough to be published as physics papers he co-wrote with the effects team.

Which Guardian of the Galaxy is voiced by Vin Diesel?

Groot: Vin Diesel recorded his catchphrase, 'I am Groot', in several other languages too, so that foreign releases kept his voice.

Birdman is presented as though it were filmed how?

In one continuous take: the cuts are hidden between long, tightly choreographed shots, so each day began with hours of rehearsal and a single slip meant starting the take again.

Mad Max: Fury Road stars Charlize Theron as which character?

Imperator Furiosa, the shaven-headed war-rig driver who smuggles Immortan Joe's wives to freedom; Anya Taylor-Joy played her younger self in the 2024 prequel Furiosa.

Who asked his wife, Margaret Sixel, to edit his film Mad Max: Fury Road, winning her one of its six Oscars?

George Miller told her the film would not look like every other action movie if she cut it. Its six Oscars, all in craft categories, were the most of any film that night.

Spotlight follows the investigative team of which newspaper?

The Boston Globe: its Spotlight team's 2002 reports on clergy-abuse cover-ups in the Boston archdiocese won a Pulitzer and led Cardinal Bernard Law to resign that December.

Spotlight won Best Picture and only one other Oscar, in which category?

Original Screenplay: Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer won early in the night and nothing more followed until Best Picture at the very end, the leanest haul for a top winner since 1952.

The genetically engineered dinosaur in Jurassic World (2015) is called what?

Indominus rex was engineered as a new attraction to boost visitor numbers, and the cuttlefish DNA in its mix lets it camouflage itself.

The Force Awakens ends with Rey finding Luke Skywalker on a rocky island filmed off which country's coast?

Ireland: the island is Skellig Michael, off County Kerry, where early medieval monks built a clifftop monastery reached by hundreds of stone steps, the climb Rey makes to find Luke.

Which sound acts as the hypnotic trigger in Get Out?

A spoon stirring a teacup: Missy hypnotises Chris with it on the pretext of curing his smoking, and he drops into the 'sunken place', conscious but unable to move.

Which two actors were in talks to star in La La Land before Gosling and Stone?

Miles Teller and Emma Watson: Watson left to make Beauty and the Beast, while Ryan Gosling passed on playing the Beast in that same film and took the La La Land lead.

Which song from La La Land's record Golden Globes sweep of 2017 went on to win the Oscar too?

City of Stars was one of seven Golden Globes from seven nominations for La La Land, which then tied the Oscar record with 14 nominations yet lost Best Picture after being named the winner by mistake.

Moonlight's Chiron grows up during the crack epidemic in a poor neighbourhood of which American city?

Miami: Barry Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney both grew up in its Liberty Square projects with mothers battling addiction, yet did not meet until they were adults.

Which Moonlight actor won an Oscar as Juan, a father figure to young Chiron?

Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor although Juan appears only in the film's first act, and he was widely reported as the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar.

The Shape of Water won the top prize at which festival before its Oscar run?

Venice: its Golden Lion went to a film Guillermo del Toro had paid to design out of his own pocket before pitching it to a studio.

The Shape of Water was inspired by which classic monster movie?

Creature from the Black Lagoon: del Toro wanted the 1954 film's Gill-man to get the girl, so he set his romance in a 1962 Baltimore government lab.

Black Panther was the first superhero film to achieve what?

A Best Picture nod: The Dark Knight's 2009 snub helped push the Academy to widen the field from five films to ten, yet a superhero film still took another decade to get in.

Green Book takes its title from what?

A travel guide for Black motorists: Harlem postal worker Victor Hugo Green launched it in 1936, and it folded in the 1960s once civil rights law ended the legal segregation it steered drivers around.

Which actor plays the bouncer Tony Lip in Green Book?

Viggo Mortensen put on more than 40 pounds for the part and learned Tony's Bronx accent from recordings that Tony's son Nick Vallelonga, a co-writer, had made of his father.

Avengers: Endgame held the title of highest-grossing film ever until which film reclaimed it in 2021?

Avatar: a March 2021 re-release in China nudged it back past Endgame, $2.802 billion to $2.797 billion, more than eleven years after it first reached cinemas.

Who directed Joker (2019)?

Todd Phillips, known for The Hangover comedies, modelled Joker on Scorsese's Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy and cast their star, Robert De Niro, as a talk-show host.

Parasite was the first Korean film to win which prize?

The Palme d'Or: the Cannes jury chose Parasite unanimously. Months later Bong Joon-ho shrugged that the Oscars were 'very local', then won Best Picture there.

What kind of home do the Kim family live in at the start of Parasite?

A semi-basement flat, or banjiha: Seoul's were built as Cold War emergency bunkers, and renting them out as homes was at first illegal.

Which 2010s film about Hollywood's switch to talkies was itself made as a silent film and won Best Picture?

The Artist has no spoken dialogue until its final scene, when George Valentin speaks his only line, 'With pleasure', and reveals a French accent.

In Life of Pi (2012), what is the name of the Bengal tiger that shares Pi's lifeboat?

Richard Parker: a clerk's mix-up swapped the names of the cub and the hunter who caught him, so the tiger got the man's name and the hunter went down as Thirsty.

Who won an Oscar as the bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012)?

Christoph Waltz won his second Oscar in a Tarantino role. In a cameo, Franco Nero, star of the 1966 Django, asks the new Django to spell his name and, told the D is silent, says 'I know'.

Over how many years was Richard Linklater's Boyhood (2014) filmed with the same cast?

Twelve: shooting ran intermittently from 2002 to 2013 with only basic plot points fixed in advance, so Ellar Coltrane aged on screen from six to eighteen.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is set in which fictional European country?

Zubrowka was filmed in Görlitz, Germany, where an empty Art Nouveau department store was dressed as the hotel's lobby. The story draws on the writings of Stefan Zweig.

Leonardo DiCaprio's Oscar-winning turn in The Revenant (2015) portrays which real 1820s frontiersman, mauled by a bear and left for dead?

Hugh Glass's 1823 ordeal, told in Michael Punke's 2002 novel, supplied the story; delays pushed the shoot from Canada to Argentina in search of snow.

What finally persuaded 20th Century Fox to greenlight Deadpool in 2014?

Leaked test footage: Fox had sat on the 2012 reel for two years. Once it surfaced online in 2014 fans went wild, and the studio approved the film about a month later.

Which One Direction member made his feature film debut in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (2017)?

Harry Styles won the part against hundreds of hopefuls, and Christopher Nolan said he had not realised quite how famous the singer was when he cast him.

Pixar's Coco (2017) is set during which holiday?

Day of the Dead: Disney's 2013 bid to trademark 'Día de los Muertos' drew such a backlash that it withdrew the filing, and Pixar later hired a leading critic, cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, as a consultant.

When Bohemian Rhapsody was announced in 2010, which comedian was set to play Freddie Mercury before leaving over creative differences?

Sacha Baron Cohen wanted a gritty, adults-only portrait of Mercury while the band preferred a family-friendly film about Queen, so he quit in 2013. Rami Malek later won an Oscar in the role.

Alfonso Cuarón's Roma (2018) takes its name from a neighbourhood in which capital?

Mexico City: Colonia Roma is the district where Cuarón grew up, and the film's maid Cleo is based on Libo Rodríguez, the nanny who helped raise him from the age of nine months.

Which actor's teenage stint as a stripper in Tampa inspired Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike?

Channing Tatum danced in Tampa clubs at 18, years before he was famous. He plays Mike himself, though he has said the story on screen is invented.

Which crop does stranded botanist Mark Watney grow in Martian soil to stay alive in The Martian?

Potatoes save him, fertilised with the crew's own waste inside the habitat. Real ones were grown on a sound stage next door to the set during filming.

Which actor became the first three-time Best Actor Oscar winner for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln?

Daniel Day-Lewis had already won for My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood. Liam Neeson held the part for five years before deciding he had grown too old for it.

Which actress won an Oscar as Fantine in Les Misérables, where the cast sang live on set?

Anne Hathaway first saw the part at age eight, when her own mother played it on the stage show's first national tour. She had her real hair cut off on camera.

Which Furious 7 star died during the shoot, leaving brothers Caleb and Cody to finish his scenes?

Paul Walker died in a car crash in November 2013 with the shoot under way. Production stopped for months, and the finished film closes as a tribute to him.

Which singer won an Oscar for the Bond theme Skyfall, whose first draft took 10 minutes?

Adele wrote it with producer Paul Epworth, and it became the first Bond theme ever to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Which actor lost nearly 50 pounds to play AIDS patient Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club?

Matthew McConaughey went from 183 pounds to 136 for the part and won Best Actor. His co-star Jared Leto took Best Supporting Actor on the same night.

In Pixar's Inside Out, which emotion is swept out of Headquarters and has to trek back with Joy?

Sadness, voiced by Phyllis Smith, proves to be the emotion Riley needs in order to ask her parents for help. The upheaval starts when the family leaves Minnesota for San Francisco.

Which streaming service put Martin Scorsese's The Irishman online weeks after its cinema debut?

Netflix bought the rights for $105 million in 2017 and paid for the production too. The film streamed from November 27, 2019, under four weeks after reaching cinemas.

Which actor won his first acting Oscar as stuntman Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?

Brad Pitt took Best Supporting Actor for the part. His only earlier Oscar had come as a producer, when 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture.

Which actress trained in ballet for months and won an Oscar as Nina Sayers in Black Swan?

Natalie Portman won Best Actress as a dancer cracking under the strain of a New York staging of Swan Lake. Co-star Mila Kunis went through the same training.

In How to Train Your Dragon, what name does Hiccup give the injured Night Fury he befriends?

Toothless belongs to the rarest and fastest dragon species in the story. His growls and purrs were performed by sound designer Randy Thom.

Which actor played Rooster Cogburn, John Wayne's Oscar-winning role, in the Coens' True Grit?

Jeff Bridges earned a Best Actor nomination as the boozy lawman. The film went into Oscar night with 10 nominations and won none of them.

Which actress, the real-life inspiration for Minny Jackson, won an Oscar as her in The Help?

Octavia Spencer also voiced the character in the audiobook of the novel behind the film. Jessica Chastain was nominated in the same Oscar category for the same film.

Which pioneering French filmmaker is found selling toys in a Paris station in Scorsese's Hugo?

Georges Méliès really did end up selling toys at Montparnasse station after going bankrupt. The magician turned director was later awarded the Légion d'honneur.

Which masked villain, played by Tom Hardy, cripples Batman in combat in The Dark Knight Rises?

Bane goes on to trap Gotham's police in the sewers and cut the city off from the outside world. He was once cast out of the League of Shadows.

Which director followed The Hurt Locker with Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden?

Kathryn Bigelow reunited with her Hurt Locker writer, Mark Boal. Jessica Chastain plays Maya, a fictional CIA analyst modelled in part on a real officer.

Which NFL team does Robert De Niro's bookmaker father bet heavily on in Silver Linings Playbook?

Philadelphia Eagles games rule the household, and he believes his son's attention decides the result. His final wager also rides on a dance contest score.

Which actress was brought in after filming to voice Joaquin Phoenix's operating system in Her?

Scarlett Johansson re-recorded the part after Samantha Morton's version was dropped in post-production. Her character, also called Samantha, is never seen.

Which Australian director shot The Great Gatsby in Sydney and had Jay-Z oversee its songs?

Baz Luhrmann recreated Jazz Age Long Island in Australia and released the result in 3D. A Sydney college building stood in for the title character's mansion.

Which Parks and Recreation actor at first turned down Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy?

Chris Pratt was known for supporting parts such as Andy Dwyer when Marvel hired him in 2013. His Peter Quill was abducted from Missouri as a child.

Which villain in The Lego Movie, voiced by Will Ferrell, plans to freeze the world with glue?

Lord Business calls his superweapon the Kragle, in fact a tube of Krazy Glue. Its missing cap is the Piece of Resistance the heroes are hunting for.

Which British actress earned an Oscar nomination as Amy Dunne, the wife who vanishes in Gone Girl?

Rosamund Pike landed the part after Reese Witherspoon, who helped develop the film, had originally been slated to play it. Novelist Gillian Flynn wrote the script.

Which mathematician does Benedict Cumberbatch play cracking the Enigma code in The Imitation Game?

Alan Turing devised new ways to decrypt German messages for Britain during the Second World War. The film draws on Andrew Hodges's 1983 biography of him.

Which former Batman plays a faded superhero star staging a Broadway play in Birdman?

Michael Keaton first asked the director whether the script was making fun of his own past in the cape. The role earned him a Best Actor nomination at the Oscars.

Which inflatable healthcare robot, built by Hiro's brother, becomes a superhero in Big Hero 6?

Baymax lives in the futuristic city of San Fransokyo, where 14-year-old Hiro wastes his talent on illegal robot fights until the pair team up.

Which African country hosted the Mad Max: Fury Road shoot after rain made Broken Hill bloom?

Namibia took over in 2011 when heavy rain covered the Australian desert around Broken Hill in wildflowers, ruining its wasteland look.

Which filmmaker, chosen by star Ryan Gosling himself, won Best Director at Cannes for Drive?

Nicolas Winding Refn, a Dane, got the job because the lead actor was allowed to choose his own director, a first in his career.

Which FBI sting, using a fictitious Arabian company to bribe politicians, inspired American Hustle?

Abscam led to bribery convictions for a US senator and several House members, caught on videotape. The film is a heavily fictionalised version of the scandal.

Which director won an Oscar for The King's Speech, then made Les Misérables and the musical Cats?

Tom Hooper took Best Director for the royal drama, which won four Oscars in all. His Les Misérables added three more two years later.

Which actor plays Kylo Ren, the son of Han Solo and Leia, in Star Wars: The Force Awakens?

Adam Driver hesitated over the part because he was wary of big movies. He has said the character's complicated nature was what won him over.

Which star of The Office directed A Quiet Place and played the father opposite Emily Blunt?

John Krasinski, the sitcom's Jim Halpert, also co-wrote the script. It was his co-star who suggested he direct the film after he pitched her his vision for it.

In which Asian city does Rachel Chu meet her boyfriend's super-rich family in Crazy Rich Asians?

Singapore is where the New York professor flies for a wedding and learns the truth about the Young family. Filming also took place across the border in Malaysia.

Which British monarch does Olivia Colman play in The Favourite, torn between two rival courtiers?

Queen Anne brought Olivia Colman the Best Actress Oscar. She was the filmmaker's only choice for the part, while Kate Winslet dropped out of a rival role.

Which director won his first competitive Oscar for co-writing the true-crime story BlacKkKlansman?

Spike Lee shared Best Adapted Screenplay for the film, based on Ron Stallworth's memoir of going undercover against the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs.

Which actor played both Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and Cable in Deadpool 2 in 2018?

Josh Brolin played the Marvel villain through motion capture, a performance critics singled out. He returned to the role in Avengers: Endgame a year later.

Which South Korean maker of Snowpiercer and Okja won the Best Director Oscar for Parasite?

Bong Joon-ho began the film as a 15-page outline and became only the second Asian filmmaker to win the award. It was his first film to earn over $100 million worldwide.

Which private detective with a flamboyant Southern accent does Daniel Craig play in Knives Out?

Benoit Blanc got his voice from hours of daily dialect coaching, with the star studying footage of playwright Tennessee Williams and historian Shelby Foote.

Which dog star of The Artist was ruled ineligible for a Best Actor BAFTA despite voters asking?

Uggie was turned down because, the academy explained, he was not a human being and his only motivation as an actor was sausages.

Which cinematographer won three Oscars in a row for Gravity, Birdman and The Revenant?

Emmanuel Lubezki was the first cinematographer to win the award three years running, shooting one film for Alfonso Cuarón and two for Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

Which actress wrongly announced La La Land as Best Picture at the 2017 Oscars instead of Moonlight?

Faye Dunaway read the title from a card shown to her by co-presenter Warren Beatty, who had been handed a spare Best Actress envelope by mistake.

Which actress, first cast as Diana for Batman v Superman, went on to lead Wonder Woman?

Gal Gadot signed a three-picture deal in 2013, four years before her solo film. Patty Jenkins directed it, with Chris Pine as her co-star.

Which Broadway songwriter co-wrote the songs for Disney's Moana?

Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote them with Opetaia Foa'i and Mark Mancina, who also composed the score. The story follows a village chief's daughter chosen by the ocean.

Which director made Thor: Ragnarok and also played Korg, a soft-spoken gladiator made of rocks?

Taika Waititi based the character's gentle voice on Polynesian bouncers. He got the job after the director of the previous Thor film chose not to return.

Which actor-director made Hacksaw Ridge, his first film behind the camera since Apocalypto?

Mel Gibson tells the true story of Desmond Doss, a combat medic who refused to carry a weapon and still received the Medal of Honor for his service on Okinawa.

Which NASA mathematician does Taraji P. Henson play, helping launch John Glenn, in Hidden Figures?

Katherine Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. NASA named a computing building at its Langley Research Center after her the following year.

Under which title was Disney's Zootopia released in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe?

Zootropolis nods to a metropolis rather than a utopia. German audiences got a third name, Zoomania, because a children's book there had too similar a title.

Which actor plays Pennywise, tormentor of the Losers' Club in Derry, in the 2017 film It?

Bill Skarsgård said he had to do something different from Tim Curry, whose earlier take on the clown he called truly great. He later returned for a prequel series.

Which Canadian director made Arrival and then Blade Runner 2049 in back-to-back years?

Denis Villeneuve earned a Best Director nomination for the first of the pair, his film about a linguist meeting aliens. He went on to make the Dune films.

Which California city is home to Christine McPherson, the Catholic-school senior of Lady Bird?

Sacramento is the hometown the heroine longs to escape for the East Coast. The film's writer-director has talked of making a whole quartet of films set there.