Trivia / Kong: Skull Island

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• Acting for Two:
  • Toby Kebbell played both Jack Chapman and Kong (via motion capture for the latter).
  • Will Brittain portrays both young Hank Marlow and his adult son.
• All-Star Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly, John Goodman and Toby Kebbell lead the charge in this movie.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Both Tom Hiddleston and Samuel L. Jackson admitted their reasons for joining the movie were basically this (on a lesser note, Brie Larson accepted because her character was an Action Girl instead of a Damsel in Distress). Jackson even stated:
  "When they said 'King Kong, we want you', I was like 'Awesome!'. Then I found out that I was the second choice and I still didn't care. I'll do it anyway. They had an Academy Award winner at first and he didn't want to be home away from home, away from his kids that long because we were gone forever in Hawaii, Australia, and Vietnam. So I was like 'My family didn't care, I'll go!'"
• California Doubling: "Skull Island" in the movie is actually based on Vietnamese locales, with the rocky bay area surrounding the island being filmed at the famous Ha Long Bay, one of UNESCO's World Heritage sites.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Japanese dub, James Conrad is voiced by the singer GACKT.
• Channel Hop: The movie was originally set to be distributed by Universal. Distribution ultimately moved to Warner Bros..
• Creator Backlash: Jordan Vogt-Roberts co-wrote and appeared in the Honest Trailers of his own movie, highlighting some legitimate flaws with the film, such as massive (in his own words) structural problems, lack of character arcs for most of the human cast and the fact that there are too many human characters to begin with. However, he still stood by the film and attacked the video made on the film by CinemaSins shortly before Honest Trailers was released.
• Dear Negative Reader: The director spent some time on Twitter attacking CinemaSins for their video on the film, calling them trolls and countering some specific sins. Rather notably, he had participated in the Honest Trailers video for the film before all this happened and was released shortly afterwards, where his own criticisms of the film were noted to be especially harsh.
• Executive Meddling: Part of the reason for the film going to Warner Bros. Legendary wanted the film to be a prelude to a potential crossover with Godzilla, but Universal (holders of the Kong rights, and Legendary's then-partner) refused to allow it, as they wanted nothing to do with Godzilla^note Coincidentally, Universal owns the US rights to the original King Kong vs. Godzilla, and since 2016 has held the US licensing rights to several of Toho's Godzilla films due to Universal's acquisition of Classic Media.
• Fake American: English actor Toby Kebbell as American soldier Jack Chapman.
• Follow the Leader: The film's marketing emulates that of Godzilla (2014), teasing and showing as little of the titular monster as possible until the release date gets much closer. Justified due to being made by the same production companies and even being set in the same universe.
• Market-Based Title: According to the Japanese poster, it's "King Kong: Giant God of Skull Island". With bonus Shout-Out as "giant god" is in the kanji that can also be read as "kyojin".
• Missing Trailer Scene: The Comic-Con trailer has scenes of a concealed Kong walking through a grove of trees, Slivko being with Packard and the other soldiers when they pay their respects to those killed by Kong, and Chapman looking down a hole. The second official trailer extends the scene of Chapman looking down the hole. Both trailers also have lines that aren't spoken in the final film:
  It's a survey job. Just chopper them in and out. It'd be a joyride.
  Packard: What you're looking at...is a monster of some bygone era.
  Weaver: We don't belong here.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Artist Joe DeVito launched a lawsuit against Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros., claiming that he had approached Warner Bros. to make a prequel series to King Kong based on his 1992 Skull Island project, and that they had turned him down only to appropriate aspects of it for the film without his permission or compensating him.
• Sleeper Hit: Several outlets had expressed concerns that the movie would serve as a loss to its financiers (in spite of the movie's better-than-expected opening weekend) due to the substantial competition it had to face in its release window... And yet it managed to have substantially strong legs by ending its run with about $170M. Even if this was a bit shy of its production budget ($185M), the overseas numbers (particularly from China) ensured that the film was a success. It also did substantially better than Power Rangers (2017), which many believed would have stepped on Kong's legs at the box office (though it ended up being a minor flop instead).
• Those Two Actors:
  • We have Marvel Cinematic Universe alumni among the main cast: Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly, Shea Whigham, and Samuel L. Jackson.
  • Dr. Dre and Eazy-E (or, specifically, Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell) reunite.
  • From the Planet of the Apes reboot series, we have Toby Kebbell and Terry Notary.
• Throw It In!: "It sounds like a bird, but it's a fuckin' ant!" This entire scene was an outtake in which John C. Reilly was trying to get the cast and crew to laugh by throwing out the most bizarre, outlandish imaginary monster he could come up with. Jordan Vogt-Roberts decided that it fit in with Skull Island's bizarre ecology and kept it. In a later interview, Vogt-Roberts said he wanted to include the giant ant in a scene, but couldn't due to budget constraints.
• What Could Have Been: See here.

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