Trivia / Ben-Hur (2016)

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $100 Million. Box Office, $94.1 million (Worldwide). This was one of several bombs in 2016 that ended the presidency of Paramount alumni Brad Grey.
• California Doubling: The Jerusalem scenes were filmed in Matera, Basilicate, in the South of Italy.
• Creator Killer: Chipped in joint by Paramount and MGM.
  • This version of the film got caught up in a management feud at Paramount's parent company Viacom. The latter's CEO Philippe Dauman resigned in acrimony the day the movie opened.
  • 2016 aka the year of Paramount flops, of which only a few made more that $100 million domestically and none reached $200 million domestically, ended the job of Paramount's president Brad Grey; he received a vote of confidence from the Redstones, though, but after other flops that extended into early 2017, Grey resigned and died of cancer a few months later.
• Fake Nationality: Practically everyone but Ayelet Zurer (Naomi) and Sofia Black-D'Elia (Tirzah), who are both Jewish and play Jews. Bonus point to Zurer for being Israeli and playing a Judean.
• Genre-Killer: Sword-and-sandal/biblical epics were already of life support by 2016, and the failure of this film was pretty much the final nail in the genre's coffin.
• Hey, It's That Place!: The Jerusalem scene were filmed in the old Southern Italian city of Matera, which would be used as the city on Themyscira in Wonder Woman (with some added CGI scenery) in addition to already doubling as Jerusalem in a ton of biblical films since The '60s. In a rare instance of non-Italian film where the city appears as itself, there's also No Time to Die.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Rodrigo Santoro reprised his role as Jesus for the Brazilian Portuguese dub.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Gal Gadot and Pedro Pascal were initially attached to the film.
  • Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Cooke were also considered for the film.

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