Trivia / Ridley Scott

• Attention Deficit Creator Disorder: The guy is busy. Just look at his IMDB page.
• Breakthrough Hit: The Duellists was his debut, but Alien got him noticed.
• Career Resurrection: Gladiator served as this for him after the doldrums of the 1990s.
• Creator Backlash:
  • He disowned the theatrical cut of Kingdom of Heaven and named the Director's Cut as the definitive version. To further this point, during the TIFF press conference for The Martian, he said that re-editing the film was the only regret he's made in his career.
  • Ridley Scott has expressed disapproval of the direction other directors took Alien series, especially in regards to the Alien vs. Predator crossover, but his attempts to retake creative control have been met with mixed opinions — including from Scott himself.^note Scott had originally signed on to helm Alien³, but — according to Sigourney Weaver — after learning that Fox was planning an Alien vs. Predator movie he left the franchise out of disgust. Prometheus was originally going to be a direct prequel to Alien, with Scott lamenting having ever left the franchise in the other creative hands. However, feeling that "the beast [was] cooked" and no longer inspired fear, Scott agreed to Damon Lindeloff's script rewrites, which removed the Xenomorphs and all direct connections to Alien. When the lack of Xenomorphs — among other things — resulted in Prometheus earning a largely negatively reception, Scott changed his tune and made Alien: Covenant to explore the origins of the Xenomorphs... and strike Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem from the series canon while he was at it. While Scott had announced his intent to keep making Alien movies until he died, Covenant's mediocre reception once again left Scott convinced that "the beast is cooked" and that the franchise needs to move away from the titular Aliens if it is to continue.
• Development Hell: Due to the aforementioned Attention Deficit Creator Disorder (and other factors), a number of projects he's been attached to over the years have ended up stalling early in development. It's gotten to the point there is a whole Wikipedia page devoted to his unrealized projects.
• Enforced Method Acting: The crew's reaction when Kane's chest bursts? Their look of shock was real.
• Executive Meddling: He's a frequent victim of this from time to time, with Blade Runner, Prometheus, and Kingdom of Heaven being the most prominent examples.
• Knight Fever: Knighted in 2003 as a Knight Bachelor, he was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 2024 New Year's Honours List, entitling him to the post-nominal letters GBE.
• The Other Marty: He was one of the unfortunate people to have a project with Kevin Spacey in the works at the time that Spacey’s reputation became radioactive from numerous sexual assault accusations. He was replaced with Christopher Plummer despite the massive expense required in reshooting every scene with just over a month before the film’s release.
• Production Posse:
  • All of Scott's films from Prometheus onwards have involved Darius Wolski as cinematographer, while John Mathieson shot 5 of Scott's films, and Adrian Biddle and Hugh Johnson shot 2 each (Johnson also served as second-unit director on 1492: Conquest of Paradise, G.I. Jane and Kingdom of Heaven). Since the 1990s most of his films have been edited by either Pietro Scalia, Dody Dorn, or Claire Simpson. Ever since Gladiator, Janty Yates and Arthur Max have been his primary costume designer and production designer, respectively.
  • Russell Crowe has starred in five of Scott's films, Željko Ivanek in four films, Michael Fassbender, Ghassan Massoud and Sigourney Weaver have acted in 3 films each, and Armand Assante, Orlando Bloom, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Marton Csokas, Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Idris Elba, Albert Finney, Jeremy Irons, Oscar Isaac, Harvey Keitel, Simon McBurney, Joaquin Phoenix, Brad Pitt, Rafe Spall, Mark Strong, and Benedict Wong have all appeared in 2 films each.
  • Hans Zimmer first worked with Scott on Black Rain, and scored an additional 5 of Scott's films until Matchstick Men (he was reportedly attached to Kingdom of Heaven, but was unable to commit owing to scheduling conflicts). From A Good Year until Prometheus, Marc Streitenfeld scored all of Scott's films. Harry Gregson Williams has scored four of his films (and also provided additional music for Prometheus) and is currently his preferred composer, and Daniel Pemberton, Jerry Goldsmith and Vangelis have each scored 2 of his films.
• Troubled Production: Something that happens to him so frequently, that he has his own subsection, on the Film page for "Serial Offenders." The man cannot catch a break.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Scott worked as a designer for The BBC in the '60s and was assigned to work on the Doctor Who serial "The Daleks", which introduced the titular creatures. However, he had to drop out due to a scheduling conflict, resulting in Raymond Cusick being assigned in his place. Had Scott been available for the story, he would've been the one to design the Daleks.
  • In the late 1970s, he began work on an adaptation of Dune with producer Dino De Laurentiis, but dropped out upon the death of his brother Frank, opting instead to direct Blade Runner, with De Laurentiis later hiring David Lynch to direct instead, with the film ultimately being released in 1984.
  • Scott was tapped to helm Alien³, but refused — according to Sigourney Weaver because he was outraged that Fox was planning an Alien vs. Predator crossover movie.
  • He planned an adaptation of I Am Legend with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the late 1990s for Warner Bros., with the intent of filming for an R-rating (the studio's art direction and special effects workers went so far as creating designs for the apocalyptic mutant creatures), but the film's proposed $125 million budget (huge for the time) and a series of big-budget bombs saw the film placed into turnaround.
  • His aforementioned Attention Deficit Creator Disorder forced him to drop out of directing Blade Runner 2049 and instead serve as an executive producer, with Denis Villeneuve taking over.
• Write What You Know: The scenery for Blade Runner was based on his hometown of Middlesbrough.

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