Development Warren Beatty planned to direct and star in a
Howard Hughes biopic in the early 1970s. He co-wrote the script with
Bo Goldman after a proposed collaboration with
Paul Schrader fell through. Goldman wrote his own script,
Melvin and Howard, which depicted Hughes's possible relationship with
Melvin Dummar. Beatty's thoughts regularly returned to the project over the years, Beatty's Hughes biopic was eventually released under the title ''
Rules Don't Apply in 2016. Charles Evans Jr. purchased the film rights for Howard Hughes: The Untold Story'' () in 1993. Evans secured financing from
New Regency Productions, but development stalled.
The Aviator was a joint production between
Warner Bros. Pictures, which handled Latin American and Canadian distribution, and
Disney, which released the film internationally under its
Miramax Films banner in the United States and the United Kingdom. Disney previously developed a Hughes biopic with director
Brian De Palma and actor
Nicolas Cage between 1997 and 1998. Titled
Mr. Hughes, the film would have starred Cage in the dual roles of both Hughes and
Clifford Irving. It was conceived when De Palma and Cage were working on
Snake Eyes with writer
David Koepp.
Universal Pictures joined the competition in March 1998 when it purchased the film rights to
Empire: The Life, Legend and Madness of Howard Hughes (), written by
Donald Barlett and
James Steele. The
Hughes brothers were going to direct
Johnny Depp as Howard Hughes, based on a script by
Terry Hayes. Universal canceled it when they decided they did not want to fast-track development to compete with Disney. In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, director
Miloš Forman was in talks to direct a film about the early life of Hughes with
Edward Norton as Hughes. In 2001, another version was announced to be produced and directed by
William Friedkin, who intended to make a three-hour film about Hughes based on the book
Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters by
Richard Hack. In a 2002 report from
Variety, it was revealed that
Norman Jewison had been developing a Hughes biopic based on
Terry Moore's autobiography
The Beauty and the Billionaire for "more than a year" and was going to meet with
John Travolta for the role. Also in the early 2000s, director
Christopher Nolan had developed a film about Hughes, also based on Hack's biography. All other versions were shelved when
Martin Scorsese came aboard to direct
The Aviator, although Nolan would return to his Howard Hughes project after completing
The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, using the book
Citizen Hughes: The Power, the Money and the Madness by
Michael Drosnin as the source. Nolan wrote the script, which followed the darker and final years of Hughes's life. Nolan again, shelved the project when Warren Beatty was developing his
long-awaited Hughes film. It was reported that Nolan's version would have starred
Jim Carrey as Hughes. Disney restarted development on a new Howard Hughes biopic in June 1999, hiring
Michael Mann to direct
Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of Howard Hughes, based on a script by
John Logan. The studio put it on hold again following the disappointing box-office performance of Mann's critically acclaimed
The Insider.
New Line Cinema picked it up in turnaround almost immediately, with Mann planning to direct after finishing
Ali. Mann was eventually replaced by Scorsese, who had worked with DiCaprio on
Gangs of New York. Scorsese later said that he "grossly misjudged the budget".
Angelina Jolie was approached by the studios to have a role in the film, but she turned it down after learning executive producer
Harvey Weinstein was involved with the film. Hughes suffered from
obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), most notably an obsession with germs and cleanliness. DiCaprio suffered from a mild version of the disorder as a child, which returned when filming the movie. Scorsese and DiCaprio worked closely with Dr.
Jeffrey M. Schwartz of
UCLA to portray the most accurate depiction of OCD. The filmmakers had to focus on the previous accounts of Hughes's behaviors, as well as the time period; when Hughes was suffering from the disorder, there was no psychiatric definition for what ailed him. Instead of receiving proper treatment, Hughes was forced to hide his stigmatized compulsions; his disorder began to conflict with everyday functioning. DiCaprio dedicated hundreds of hours of work to portray Hughes's unique case of OCD onscreen. Apart from doing his research on Hughes, DiCaprio met with people suffering from OCD. In particular, he focused on how some individuals would compulsively and repeatedly wash their hands, inspiring the scene in which his hand starts to bleed as he scrubs it in the bathroom. The character arc of Howard Hughes was a drastic one: from the height of his career to the appearance of his compulsions, and eventually, to him sitting naked in a screening room, refusing to leave and repeating "the way of the future".
Cinematography film used in scenes depicting events before 1935 In an article for the
American Cinematographer, John Pavlus wrote, "The film boasts an ambitious fusion of period lighting techniques, extensive effects sequences and a digital re-creation of two extinct cinema color processes: two-color and three-strip Technicolor." For the first 52 minutes of the film, scenes appear in shades of only red and cyan; green objects are rendered as blue. According to Scorsese, this was done to emulate the look of early
bipack color films, in particular the
Multicolor process, which Hughes owned, emulating the available technology of the era. Similarly, many of the scenes depicting events occurring after 1935 are treated to emulate the saturated appearance of
three-strip Technicolor. Other scenes were stock footage
colorized and are incorporated into the film. The color effects were created by
Legend Films.
Production design Scale models were used to duplicate many of the flying scenes in the film. When Martin Scorsese began planning his aviation epic, a decision was made to film flying sequences with
scale models rather than
CGI special effects. The critical reaction to the CGI models in
Pearl Harbor (2001) had been a crucial factor in Scorsese's decision to use full-scale static and scale models in this film. The building and filming of the flying models proved both cost-effective and timely. The primary scale models were the
Spruce Goose and the XF-11; both flyable scale models were designed and fabricated over a period of several months by Aero Telemetry, an aerospace company that specializes in building unmanned air vehicles. The
Spruce Goose model had a wingspan of , while the XF-11 had a wingspan. Another set of miniatures was built as a
motion control miniature used for "beauty shots" of the model taking off and in-flight, as well as in dry dock and under construction at the miniature Hughes Hangar built by New Deal Studios. The XF-11 was
reverse engineered from photographs and some rare drawings modeled in
Rhinoceros 3D by the Aero Telemetry engineering department and New Deal art department. These 3D models of the
Spruce Goose and the XF-11 were used for patterns and construction drawings for the model makers. In addition to the aircraft, the homes into which the XF-11 crashes were fabricated at 1:4 scale to match the 1:4 scaled XF-11. The model was rigged to be crashed and broken several times for different shots. The Aero Telemetry team was given only three months to complete the three models, including the 450lb H-1 Racer, with a wingspan that had to stand-in for the full-scale replica that was destroyed in a crash, shortly before principal photography began. The models were shot on location at
Long Beach and other California sites from helicopter or raft platforms. The brief yet much-heralded flight of Hughes's
HK-1 Hercules on November 2, 1947, was recreated in the
Port of Long Beach. The motion-controlled
Spruce Goose and Hughes Hangar miniatures built by New Deal Studios are on display at the
Evergreen Aviation Museum in
McMinnville, Oregon, with the original Hughes H-1
Spruce Goose. == Release ==