Development In 2009,
Warner Bros. president Jeff Robinov approached the Wachowskis about creating an original intellectual property and
franchise. Development began two years later, with the production and visual effects teams doing
pre-production work based on a first
draft of the
script, while the Wachowskis were shooting the future-set segments of
Cloud Atlas. the
Odyssey. "It was making me super-emotional", Lana has said. "The whole concept of these almost spiritual journeys and you're changed." Another inspiration was
The Wizard of Oz which Lana contrasts to the
Odyssey. "
Dorothy is pretty much the same at the end as she is at the beginning. Whereas
Odysseus goes through such an epic shift in his identity." The Wachowskis themselves describe the plot of the film as an effort to reverse the classical science-fiction trope of the hero who is "emotionally withholding and strong and stoic". Instead, they tried to create a new form of female space opera hero. "We were, like, 'Can we bring a different kind of female character like Dorothy or
Alice? Characters who negotiate conflict and complex situations with intelligence and empathy?' Yes, Dorothy has a protector,
Toto, who's always barking at everyone. And that was sort of the origin of Caine."
Production design Producer
Grant Hill and visual effects supervisor Dan Glass have noted that the Wachowskis never repeat themselves. Hill has described the design as an original take on the look of space environments, while Glass mentioned it was influenced by cities around Europe rather than science fiction touchstones. Examples include
Renaissance architecture, modern glass and Gothic art. Roberto Malerba and
Bruce Berman served as executive producers.
Principal photography commenced at
Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden on April 2, 2013, on an initial budget of US$130 million. The production remained in the London studio through June, then moved to various locations in Chicago, Illinois, throughout late July and August. took place in January and early May of the next year, the latter of which took place in
Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. Star Channing Tatum later stated: The opening scenes show the
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and
Dancing House in Prague, both of which were designed by
Frank Gehry. This was the second feature that cinematographer
John Toll shot
digitally, using
Arri Alexas and
Codex Recorders, after
Iron Man 3, in part due to the visual effects element.
Legend3D handled the
stereoscopic conversion of the film, having recently integrated the
Mistika post-production software into their pipeline. Vision3's Chris Parks is the stereoscopic supervisor of the film. An eight-minute-long pursuit sequence, code-named "Fifty-Two Part" by the film's crew, depicts Jupiter and Caine fleeing from aliens and spaceships in downtown Chicago shortly after they first meet. It was the longest sequence in the script, involving some of the film's most difficult stunts. To complete it, Kunis and Tatum had to film every day for six months. For the scenes of Tatum's character flying using antigravity boots, Glass has stated that his team invented a way to use stuntmen instead of doing them digitally, despite the limited available time to shoot them. They created a rig of six cameras, called the Panocam, which was mounted on a helicopter and covered nearly 180 degrees of the action. During
post-production, the directors could combine the overlapped filmed footage, essentially creating a camera that could swing around the action independently of the helicopter's actual flying path. The technique piqued the interest of other directors who have subsequently used it in their own movies. Visual effects company
Framestore used Vicon T40 cameras for pre-vis and
motion-capture purposes, the same camera system they used in the 2013 film
Gravity, which was critically acclaimed for its cinematography and visual effects.
Music The
film's score was composed by
Michael Giacchino and performed by the
Hollywood Studio Symphony. On June 10, 2013, Giacchino tweeted that , Robert Ziegler and Tim Simonec were conducting the film's score at
Abbey Road Studios in London. In August, Giacchino stated: "We're actually recording all the music first, before they're even done shooting. It's been done sort of backward, and it's much more freeing doing it that way. I'm not locked down to any specific timings and what the film is doing. I can do whatever I want. It opens up a lot more possibilities." The Wachowskis first used this approach during production of
Cloud Atlas at the recommendation of co-director
Tom Tykwer who has made all his movies this way, and have since commented they will never again make a movie without recording the music first. Dancer Kyle Davis was inspired when listening to Giacchino's score for the film to create a ballet for the
Pacific Northwest Ballet named "A Dark and Lonely Space" that is choreographed to Giacchino's music. The ballet, which premiered November 2, 2018, features 24 dancers that represent planets, celestial bodies, and forces of physics, and was designed as an "
anthropomorphization of the birth of a planetary system." ==Release==