Trivia / Ghost Ship

• Completely Different Title: In Taiwan, the films title loosely translates to Frightened.
• Creator Backlash: Julianna Margulies has openly talked about how much she dislikes this film in interviews. Her reasoning for the backlash can be found under the Executive Meddling entry.
• The Danza: Francesca Rettondini as Francesca, the Italian singer in the opening scene
• Executive Meddling: The main cast signed up for a totally different script, a Psychological Thriller named Chimera about a smaller salvage team trapped on the boat they were working on, with any supernatural element left ambiguous. They were reportedly not best pleased when they turned up for work and found they were now making a supernatural Slasher Movie instead. Julianna Margulies admitted that if she and her cast mates weren’t under contract, they would have backed out. The actor on the shortest end of the stick was by and large Gabriel Byrne. In the original script, he's the starring role, or at the least the male lead of the film, and in the re-written script, He's a Decoy Protagonist that dies before the end. The only benefit, if you can call it that, is that the character is given Adaptational Heroism, as he's revealed as a killer in the original script.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Francesca Rettondini (aptly named Francesca in the film) would survive the Costa Concordia sinking some ten years after the film. Rettondini said in an interview she was in the dining hall to film a reality show when the disaster happened, and was able to evacuate to deck three with other passengers from the dining hall, which was the furthest from the water.
• Inspiration for the Work: The Antonia Graza was inspired by the real life Italian liner Andrea Doria, a luxury liner that sank after colliding with a Swedish cruise ship The Stockholm in 1956.
• What Could Have Been: There were many changes made thanks to executive intervention:
  • The original plot was described as The Shining on a boat, and it would have been relatively bloodless. Most notably, the best remembered scene of the mass murder at the dance floor was absent.
  • There were four salvage crew members only (Murphy, Epps, Greer, and Dodge) who would turn against each other after being stranded aboard an abandoned 1950s liner named the Chimera. Their first motivation was greed, with the influence of the ship being Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane at best.
  • The crew stumbles on the ship themselves, and are very confused when told by the Coast Guard the ship is reported sunk. Initially, they just plan on towing the ship and selling the ship itself for scrap, then they find gold ingots in the hold, which they estimate is around $50 million worth.
  • Greedy for the gold, Dodge sinks the tug, stranding them on the Chimera. He's suspected of sabotage, but never caught.
  • Greer has two seizure episodes, one that leaves him unconscious for a day. He's one that snaps and is locked in the large aquarium.
  • Both Dodge and Greer survive most of the film before Dodge is killed, and then Greer with a shotgun blast from the shotgun kept by the crew. Since Epps sees a figure, initially, the deaths are blamed on other, unseen salvagers.
  • Epps is shown that members of the crew became mutineers, killing passengers and crew in gold fever. The captain is killed off-screen. As mentioned elsewhere, Katie's horrible fate is far more graphic than depicted in the film, and she's eventually killed by a mutineer with an axe. We also see her family, and her mother and sister are seen dead before she is killed.
  • Murphy was the main killer, but also highlights to Epps the fact that Dodge and Greer also had murderous agendas to keep the gold for themselves. The ship runs aground near some islands, and Murphy and Epps prepare to abandon ship. When Epps finds the shotgun in Murphy's possession, he reveals his actions, then he tells Epps that now she knows what he's done, he has to kill her too.
  • The ending is vastly different. Murphy stalks Epps into the bowels of the ship. The hull gets ruptured and starts sinking. Epps gets trapped when a boiler becomes unseated. Epps sees a bunch of bodies of dead passengers, and then Katie's spirit arrives to give Epps her hand and lead her out of the ship through a hole in the hull, then remains behind. Murphy abandons his efforts to kill Epps, and loads his pockets with gold ingots. He manages to make it off the ship, but finds himself being pulled in an onrush of water flowing into the ship's smokestack as it sinks. The weight of the gold in his pockets prevents him from swimming clear, and he's sucked into the smokestack and into the bowels of the ship, where he dies. We then see the Chimera sinking underwater for a brief period...Before the whole ship just disappears, leaving empty ocean below. Epps makes it to one of the islands. A Coast Guard helicopter spots her and drops a survival pack, indicating she'll be picked up and survive.
  • Brian Cox might have starred as Murphy, but he backed out to film The Ring instead.
  • Katie was the only main ghost in the original story, seen by Epps only. She was sixteen when she died instead of twelve. Epps also sees a man down one of the corridors, but he disappears. The rest of the crew believes he's another salvager.

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