Trivia / Swordfish

• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $80 million. Box office, $69,772,969 (domestic), $147,080,413 (worldwide). The film was critically pulverized for its far-fetched plot, excessive flashiness and its dearth of sympathetic characters.
• Fake American: Hugh Jackman as Stanley.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Hugh Jackman is actually a very competent golfer so he had to pretend that he wasn't for the scene where Ginger finds him teeing balls off the roof of his trailer. Halle Berry, on the other hand, had never held a golf club before and had to have some quick professional training before the scene was shot.
• Money, Dear Boy: Halle Berry was given a $500,000 bonus to expose her breasts.
• On-Set Injury: Vinnie Jones was going to do a stunt, but John Travolta stopped him, and a stuntman did it instead. The wire broke, and the stuntman fell sixty to seventy feet onto a concrete floor, breaking his spine.
• Throw It In!: Don Cheadle came up with the bit where he hits a guy with the door.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original screenplay draft had a very different take on the Gabriel Shear character. He was first written as a mercenary whose plan for the stolen DEA funds had him joining forces with military and intelligence figures and planning to destroy corrupt politicians, and had several lengthy monologues in which U.S. Agents listened to him and then joined his crusade on the spot. While the funding and covert war angle was maintained, Skip Woods later remade Gabriel Shear into a patriotic agent who seeks to destroy world terrorists and who kills the Senator, and his aide, for trying to kill him, and stop his plans.
  • The climax was originally intended to be an airport shootout.
  • The deleted ending had a funny moment when Ginger discovers that Stan stole back the money again and donated it to a bunch of charities.
  • John Cusack and Val Kilmer were considered for Stanley.
  • Nick Nolte was originally considered for the role of Senator Reisman.
  • Bridget Moynahan turned down the role of Ginger because of the nudity.

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