Trivia / Romancing the Stone

• Associated Composer: Alan Silvestri became one for Robert Zemeckis. This movie marks the first time they worked together.
• Breakthrough Hit: For Robert Zemeckis.
• California Doubling: The film was originally to be filmed in Colombia, where the story takes place. However, Colombia also suffered an increase in American kidnappings, so production was moved to Mexico.
• Descended Creator: Michael Douglas was originally only going to produce.
• One-Book Author: Diane Thomas was working on Always—and thus unavailable for The Jewel of the Nile—when she died in a traffic accident in October 1985, only six weeks before Jewel premiered. Always, released in 1989, was finished by Jerry Belson, and Thomas went uncredited for the work she was able to do for the film.
  • Thomas also wrote an unused treatment for the third Indiana Jones film. Spielberg was resistant to using it, as its supernatural theme felt too akin to his work on Poltergeist. She never finished it before her death.
• Permanent Placeholder: Alan Silvestri was hired to do a temporary score for the film, but Robert Zemeckis liked his work so much that he kept him on as composer.
• Star-Making Role: This film made Danny DeVito a hot property, along with propelling Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner towards the A-list. Additionally, it was also Robert Zemeckis' first financially successful film as a director and the one that finally scored him the necessary clout to move forward on his pet project, a little film known as Back to the Future.
• Throw It In!: In the famous dance scene, Michael Douglas was not aware that he was being filmed. He was dancing with Kathleen Turner and some extras, and was surprised to find Robert Zemeckis had been filming him the entire time.
• Troubled Production: The Jewel of the Nile proved to be an utter production nightmare as detailed by It's a Shit Show:
  • Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito were all contractually obligated to do the film (which was particularly awkward in the case of DeVito since he was one of the original film's antagonists, forcing them to come up with a rather contrived reason for his character to team up with Douglas and Turner) with Douglas once again producing it. However, Stone director Robert Zemeckis didn't return since he was busy with Back to the Future while screenwriter Diane Thomas was turned down allegedly for asking for too much money and thus teamed up with Steven Spielberg to work on Always. As a result, Zemeckis was replaced by Lewis Teague, a genre director who recently made it big with Cujo but had no experience with a big budget film, and Diane Thomas was replaced by Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner, two TV screenwriters who would later also pen the critically reviled Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
  • Turner was adamant that she would only do Nile if the script was as good as Stone, contract or no contract. She utterly hated Rosenthal and Konner's script and refused to do the film, prompting Fox to sue her for $25 million. Douglas tried to get her back by getting Thomas back to do some rewrites but Turner still wasn't pleased. She finally accepted after she and Douglas sat in a hotel room with three versions of the script and negotiated page by page which ones would be in the finished film.
  • Shortly before filming began, production designer Richard Dawking and production manager Brian Coates died in a plane crash while location scouting. Douglas and Turner also had a near plane crash during filming, when their executive jet aircraft struck the runway in a heavy landing.
  • Shooting in Morocco proved extremely difficult due to extremely high heat, Teague's aforementioned inexperience with large-scale productions, and clashes between the American and Moroccan crew. Douglas was particularly frustrated with the Moroccan crew's lack of competence and complaints and was quick to fire anyone he felt didn't pull their weight or made unreasonable demands (such as staying in air-conditioned hotel rooms while Douglas himself slept in a tent). The situation was made worse due to shooting happening to take place during Ramadan, meaning the fasting Muslim crew would pass out or become dehydrated in the daytime heat, forcing them to film at night. This time, Douglas blamed the production assistants for this glaring planning oversight and fired them as well.
  • A huge number of props either didn't work or were held up in customs until the requisite bribes were paid. The big climatic scene of the movie had to be reshot after it was discovered that there was no film in the cameras and that the film stock was suddenly lost. Douglas was understandably furious.
  • Once shooting was nearly done in Morocco, a large number of crew members became mysteriously ill and were diagnosed by Moroccan Health Authority officials as suffering from hepatitis and ordered to undergo a six-week quarantine unless a $2.5 million bribe was paid. Douglas paid them and later found out that he was scammed since the "illness" turned out to be food poisoning. By this point, Douglas was so eager to get out of Morocco that he bribed the officials of a small airport to allow him to charter international flights to get everyone out of the country.
  • In the end, the movie was released and dedicated to Dawking and Coates as well as Diane Thomas, who had sadly died in a car accident six weeks before the premiere...in a car that Douglas had gifted to her due to her work on Romancing the Stone. While the film went on to be enough of a success that talks of another sequel were floated around; Douglas, Turner and DeVito refused in favor of making The War of the Roses instead.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, Christopher Reeve, Burt Reynolds and Sylvester Stallone were offered the role of Jack T. Colton. Stallone would later say turning it down in favour of Rhinestone was one of the biggest regrets of his life.
  • According to Kathleen Turner's memoir, Michael Douglas originally offered the role of Joan to Debra Winger. They met at a Mexican restaurant to discuss it but, according to Douglas, she ended up biting him. She didn't get the part. Jessica Lange turned down the part in order to tackle "more serious" work. Susan Sarandon turned it down because she was doing a play at the time.
  • Bob Hoskins turned down the role of Ralph.
  • A title song for Romancing the Stone was written by Guyanese-British singer Eddy Grant (of "Electric Avenue" fame). It went far enough that Casey Kasem announced it as the title song on an episode of American Top 40. In the end, though in the credits, the song itself was not included in the film, with its melody used as incidental music during one scene. It did hit #29 on the Billboard Hot 100.
  • As far as Jewel of the Nile is concerned, if only Diane Thomas were involved in writing it...
  • A second sequel with the working title, The Crimson Eagle, was optioned but ultimately shelved. The plot would have involved Jack, Joan and their kids in Thailand being blackmailed into stealing a priceless statue.

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