Trivia / Darkman

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• Acting for Two: In addition to playing Darkman in his final transformation at the end, Bruce Campbell also voiced some of the screams of characters who fall to their deaths.
• Cast the Runner-Up: As with Crimewave, Sam Raimi wanted Bruce Campbell to play the lead role, but the studio wanted a more well-known star. Campbell settles for some voice-over dubbing and a cameo as Darkman's final disguise.
• Completely Different Title:
  • Argentina: The Faceless Man
  • Portugal: Faceless Revenge
• Deleted Scene: A scene was deleted out of the final cut that involves Strack sitting on his bed in a towel, picking up a box full of gold coins, placing the coins on the bed, taking his towel off, and then jumping on the bed and writhing in ectasy on the coins, naked. As Bruce Campbell said, this scene was intended to show that the character was really messed up in the head, and meant the audience would no longer trust him. However, when test audiences claimed the scene made them uncomfortable, the studio insisted it be cut, ignoring that was the entire point.
• Divorced Installment: Sam Raimi intended to make a film of The Shadow, but created Darkman when he couldn't get the rights. He also wanted to make a Batman movie (possibly a sequel to the 1989 film). But couldn't get rights to it either.
• Fake American: The title character is played by Ballymena man Liam Neeson.
• The Foreign Subtitle:
  • Argentina and Mexico: Darkman: The Face of Vengeance
  • Brazil: Darkman: Faceless Revenge
  • Lithuania: Darkman: A Man of Darkness
  • Germany: Darkman: The Man with the Face Mask
• Hostility on the Set: Sam Raimi and Frances McDormand clashed because of Creative Differences. Raimi said, "Apparently I didn't know Fran as well as I thought I did ... The reason it was difficult was that our conception of the best movie to make differed, arguing in trying to make the best picture possible. We did come across disagreements, but they were very healthy." McDormand, however, looks back fondly on the film, and she and her husband, Joel Coen, are still friends with Raimi.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The abandoned TV Pilot.
• One-Episode Wonder: The abandoned TV pilot is one of the finest and most accurate examples of superheroics on live-action television.
• The Other Darrin: Arnold Vosloo for Liam Neeson in the sequels, and Christopher Bowen in the TV Pilot. This is all somewhat justifiable, because it's Darkman.
• Playing Against Type: Arnold Vosloo, who usually plays villainous roles, plays the titular Anti-Hero in the sequels.
• Production Posse: It's a Sam Raimi movie, so Ted Raimi is in attendance. Bruce Campbell also gets a cameo. On a meta note, Raimi also cast his buddies the Coen Brothers and Joel's wife Frances in the film, though he didn't do this regularly.
• Self-Adaptation: Raimi co-wrote and directed this based on a short story that he wrote.
• Spared by the Cut: Skip's fate remains unknown, though there is a deleted scene where Darkman kills him with his own prosthetic leg.
• Troubled Production: The production suffered from many behind-the-scenes troubles.
  • Firstly, the studio waffled several times on whether or not the film would be greenlit.
  Raimi: Finally, I told them 'Look, I've spent six months of my life on this film, and it's not like I'm trying to make an art picture. If you don't call me by nine tonight, I'm out.' Nine o'clock came and went, I opened a bottle of wine and said 'Okay, at least I'm free of it.' They called about ten, 'Alright, we'll make your movie.' They really make sure they've messed with you.
  • Once production began, the screenwriting process was gruelling, and there were lengthy post-production battles with the studio. The editing process was extremely difficult, and the editor allegedly had a nervous breakdown, and left the production. The Universal executives were also rather nervous with some of the wild things in the film, and insisted they be taken out. Sam Raimi confessed that studio movie-making, as opposed to independent filmmaking, didn't fulfill him in the same way. Additionally, they were actually unable to get Liam Neeson to record his line in the final scene, "I'm learning to live with a lot these days," resulting in it being very noticeably dubbed by Bruce Campbell.
  • After Universal made the decision to "lock" (i.e. finish editing) the film, Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bob Murawski basically broke into the editing booth at the eleventh hour and re-cut the movie under the studio's nose, reinserting nine minutes' worth of material. Sean Daniel, a Universal executive, later acknowledged that this was a "ballsy move" and "an Ocean's Eleven maneuver."
• Uncredited Role: The Coen Brothers, close friends of Sam Raimi, did some uncredited doctoring on the finished script.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Bill Paxton was almost cast as Peyton Westlake. According to Paxton, he told his friend Liam Neeson about the audition. When Neeson got the role, Paxton was so angry, that he did not speak to Neeson for months. Gary Oldman was also considered.
  • Julia Roberts was almost cast as Julie Hastings before she got the role in Pretty Woman and had to be replaced. Bridget Fonda was offered the role, but turned it down in favour of The Godfather Part III. Kelly Lynch and Demi Moore were also considered.
  • Richard Dreyfuss and James Caan both turned down the role of Louis Strack Jr.
  • Kathy Bates was originally cast as the burn doctor but backed out before filming.
  • A TV series was in development for Fox, with an unaired 30-minute pilot completed.
• Written by Cast Member: Liam Neeson and Frances McDormand re-wrote the three love scenes they had together after he becomes Darkman.

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