Development The Coens first pitched the story to
George Clooney in 1999 during the shooting of
O Brother, Where Art Thou? Ethan Coen described it as a "thought experiment" rather than a viable project. The film was originally going to follow "a troupe of actors in the 1920s putting on a play about
ancient Rome", with the focus on a
matinée idol. Clooney was to play the main character, "a hammy actor with a pencil mustache". In February 2008, the Coens said the film had no script and was only an idea. They pitched it to Clooney as an opportunity to play a "numbskull" following his roles in
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000),
Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and
Burn After Reading (2008). The project was mentioned in a December 2013 interview about
Inside Llewyn Davis. Joel Coen said they were working on
Hail, Caesar!, and that it would likely be their next project. In May 2014, the Coens reconfirmed the film's development, with the plot now focused on a "fixer" working in the 1950s Hollywood film industry.
Historical context Set in 1951,
Hail, Caesar! takes place at a transitional time for the film industry. The
studio system was breaking down, and a
Supreme Court ruling had forced studios to divest their movie theaters. Television,
then still in its early years, threatened to pull away audiences. The
Cold War and the
Red Scare were both under way. Hollywood responded with escapist fare: westerns, highly choreographed dance and aquatic spectacles, and Roman epics with massive casts. The Coens cited their own examples of subpar films and performances from the era that they saw as television reruns while growing up:
That Touch of Mink (1962), and
Laurence Olivier co-starring with
Charlton Heston in
Khartoum (1966). "We loved that stuff. We just didn't realize we were watching crap", Joel Coen said. In July,
Jonah Hill and
Scarlett Johansson entered talks to join the production.
Costume design Costume designer
Mary Zophres began work 12 weeks ahead of shooting, researching period wardrobe from the late 1940s on the assumption that most people routinely wear clothes purchased over the past few years. She designed for a working film studio of the early 1950s, plus six genre films, each of which featured a major actor working on the set for about a week. Photos from the MGM library and the
Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences showed that film crews dressed more formally than today—no shorts or sneakers. Zophres produced about 15
boards of preliminary sketches, including "sculptural Technicolor gowns" for the ballroom drama inspired by the work of
Charles James. Her
double-breasted suit for Brolin was intended to blend with his skin tone, his moustache was styled after
Walt Disney's, his hair was
permed, and his character alone wore a
fedora. Zophres modeled Tatum's look on
Troy Donahue and
Tyrone Power. The costumes in
Ben Hur in particular served as references for the gladiator sequences, although Zophres employed the contemporary technique of using painted hard plastic foam instead of metal. The film ultimately required more than 2,500 costumes, including 170 Roman extras, 120 Israelites and about 45 slaves. About 500 of the costumes were custom-made. Toward the end of the shoot, the scope of the project overtook the budget, and Zophres completed some of the sewing herself.
Filming and locations In October 2014,
Roger Deakins posted on his website that he would be the film's cinematographer and was shooting test footage.
Principal photography on the film began in
Los Angeles, California, on November 10, 2014. In December, Clooney was photographed in full
Roman regalia while filming scenes in
Downtown Los Angeles. Tatum dyed his hair blond for his role as a tap-dancing sailor, one of five in the "No Dames!" sequence set in the Swingin' Dinghy bar. Tatum had danced hip-hop and
street, not tap, but worked without a
double after much training. Other dancers came from Broadway, including Clifton Samuels, who said the scene's greatest challenge was not
Christopher Gattelli's choreography per se, but maintaining the style of the period "in which the dancers must stay on the balls of their feet." A split-screen scene from the ''
That's Entertainment!'' trilogy influenced the Coens' decision to widen the shot to reveal film crew members pushing the set into place.
Hail, Caesar! was the first movie that Deakins shot on film since
True Grit in 2010. The Coens themselves had said that their previous movie,
Inside Llewyn Davis, would probably be their last use of the medium. But with
Hail, Caesar!s classic Hollywood theme making film an obvious choice, Deakins agreed to give it one more try. "I don't mind", he recalled saying, "I'll shoot it on a cell phone if you like." Ultimately, film proved a limited palette due to the narrowing choices of
stocks and
processing options in the wake of
digital cinematography. Deakins did not recall encountering those kinds of problems on earlier projects. "But it makes me nervous now. I don't want to do that again, frankly. I don't think the infrastructure's there." Southern California locations were used throughout the film, presenting a challenge to location manager John Panzarella. He noted that "period locations are disappearing fast", including several employed in an earlier film he scouted, the 1997 Oscar-winning
L.A. Confidential. The
Warner Bros. studio, which has retained its vintage buildings, stood in for most of the fictitious Capitol Pictures Productions after trailers, electrical hookups, and other contemporary fixtures were removed.
Union Station in
downtown Los Angeles was used for some studio exteriors. The synchronized swimming scene with Johansson was choreographed and directed by
Mesha Kussman, and performed by the
Aqualillies, a Los Angeles-based group of professional synchronized swimmers. They worked at the water tank on Stage 30 at
Sony Pictures Studios; the tank was also used for
Esther Williams films and was under restoration until a week before shooting. Carlotta's house exterior was filmed at a 1927 home in the
Los Feliz section of Los Angeles; this was also the locale for The Good Luck Bar, which stood in for the Imperial Gardens Chinese restaurant. The movie premiere was shot in the
Los Angeles Theatre, selected for its spacious lobby.
Post-production Digital effects for
Hail, Caesar! encompassed three areas: standard effects like Ehrenreich's lasso tricks, period effects including a matte painting of Rome that referenced the 1951 film
Quo Vadis, and effects intended to blur the line between a 2016 film and the vintage movie-making techniques it portrays. Examples of the latter include a
green screen car sequence made to look as if it employed the older technique of
rear projection, and the submarine sequence, which employed computer graphics that suggested the use of
miniatures. "It was important that the
sub not look silly", said effects supervisor Dan Schrecker, whereas "the whole point of that Rome matte painting was that it was ridiculous". The burning film frame in McDormand's
Moviola scene was created by Sam Spreckley, a Scottish visual artist who experiments with the technique. The special effects of the beach house on the bluff were meant as an homage to
North by Northwest. ==Music and soundtrack album==