Trivia / The Money Pit

• Completely Different Title:
  • Known in France as Une baraque à tout casser, which closest translation would be A Very Lousy House.^note "X à tout casser" is an idiom for "a very intense X" or "a very violent X", but it wouldn't make sense in the actual context. "Casser" also means "to break", which makes it a pun on the house's state of disrepair A literal French translation of the original title would be Le gouffre à fric.
  • Known in Quebec as La foire aux malheurs (The Misfortunes' Fair).
  • The film's title in Germany was "Geschenkt ist noch zu teuer" ("Free Is Still Too Expensive").
• Release Date Change: The film was originally going to be released on Christmas 1985 ^note In fact, Tom Hanks even went on Late Night With David Letterman on August 20, 1985 to announce that the film was going to come out around Christmas time, but got pushed back to March 26, 1986.
• Uncredited Role: Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel did uncredited rewrites for The Money Pit.^note  Ironically, Ganz and Mandel were credited as screenwriters, alongside David Giler, in the film’s trailer, but through WGA rules, David Giler was able to get sole screenwriting credit for the final film instead.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Kathleen Turner was considered for the role of Anna Crowley. At the time, she was in a dispute with 20th Century Fox, as she did not want to do The Jewel of the Nile and tried to use the offer of playing in this movie as a negotiating ploy, although some thought at the time, that it was simply an attempt to get paid more money.
  • Michael Palin was offered the role of Max Beissart.

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