Trivia / Hard Rain

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $70 million. Box office, $19,870,567.
• Creator Backlash:
  • In a 1997 interview with Empire magazine, Minnie Driver stated she hated working on the movie due to the intense and continuous wet conditions.
  • Morgan Freeman disliked the movie and said years later after it's release: "Did any of you see this movie? Don't, just don't."
• Creator Killer: This was director Mikael Solomon's last film to get a theatrical release. He’s since had steady work in TV.
• Focus Group Ending: According to Morgan Freeman, his character was supposed to die in the end in the original cut, but the producers changed it after a negative test audience screening. Morgan Freeman commented on his character surviving in re-shoots:
  I played a bad guy in a movie and they showed it to an audience - and we're letting an audience tell us what to do now - y'know, and the audience said, "Well, I don't want him - Morgan can't die!" And I was a thief. "He should get some money". We went back into the studio and re-shot it so that I didn't die and I did get some money.
• Practical Effects: While the movie got generally bad reviews, Roger Ebert pointed out that it was a triumph from a cinematographer’s perspective. It’s hard to film scenes with a lot of water due to light reflections, and the whole movie is awash. The director had recently come off a gig as Director of Photography for The Abyss.
• International Coproduction: An American/British/French/Japanese/German production. Among the many companies whose names are seen in the credits for this are PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, The BBC and Toho-Towa.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In early stages of production, John Woo was slated to direct, but he left the project to direct Face/Off instead and the project was taken over by Mikael Salomon.
  • Jerry Goldsmith was supposed to write the film's score, but they could not afford his salary. Christopher Young lobbed hard to get the job and ultimately got it.
• Working Title: The film was originally titled The Flood, but was changed, because the filmmakers didn't want audiences to assume it was primarily a disaster movie.

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