Development and writing The early development of the script began while Kurt Wimmer was doing interviews promoting
Equilibrium. In a November 2002 interview, he discussed on which scripts he was working. He stated, "I have several scripts – foremost of which is one called
The Far-Reaching Philosophy of Edwin A. Salt – kind of a high-action spy thriller..." In another interview, Wimmer described the project as "very much about me and my wife". The plot incorporated many elements from
Equilibrium, with an oppressive and
paranoid political system of
brainwashing that gets overthrown by one of its high-ranking members, who rebels due to an emotional transformation. With the shortened title
Edwin A. Salt, the script was sold to
Columbia Pictures in January 2007. By July 2007, the script had attracted the attention of
Tom Cruise.
Terry George was the first director to join the project, and he also did some revisions to the script, but he soon left the project.
Peter Berg was the next director to consider, but he, too, eventually dropped out for undisclosed reasons. A year later,
Phillip Noyce was confirmed to direct. Noyce was attracted to
Salt for its espionage themes, which are present in most of his filmography, as well as the tension of a character who tries to prove his innocence, yet also does what he was previously accused of.
Casting ''.|alt=Liev Schreiber Initial discussions took place in 2008 between Cruise and Noyce about Cruise playing Edwin A. Salt. These discussions were going on for more than a year between the pair and their representatives. Cruise decided he was unable to commit to the script because he feared that the character was too close to his
Mission: Impossible character
Ethan Hunt. Cruise decided to work on
Knight and Day, instead. The filmmakers tried to differentiate the character from Hunt, but eventually came to accept they were too similar and decided not to change the characteristics of Salt. Noyce said, "But, you know, he had a valid point. It was kind of returning to an offshoot of a character that he'd already played. It's like playing the brother, or the cousin, of somebody that you played in another movie."
Columbia Pictures executive
Amy Pascal suggested
Angelina Jolie to Noyce, who had often spoken to Jolie in the past about a desire to create a female
spy franchise. Pascal even invited Jolie for a
Bond girl role, but the actress replied that she was more interested in playing
James Bond herself, instead. Jolie was sent
Salts script in September 2008 and liked it. Wimmer, Noyce, and producer
Lorenzo di Bonaventura went to visit Jolie at her home in
France to discuss a possible script and character change. Writer
Brian Helgeland helped with the character development and dialogue of the script based on the notes that came out of those discussions with Jolie and to accompany the gender change, the title character's name was changed to Evelyn Salt. One of Jolie's requests was to rework the third act, which originally had Salt rescue his wife and son from a coalition of villains because she did not believe a mother would neglect her child in this kind of situation. Wimmer decided then to make Salt more crucial to the villain's schemes, and add a sequence where Salt breaks into "a place harder than
Fort Knox" – after considering
Camp David, Wimmer settled on the White House. When asked if the script written for Cruise was the same for Jolie, he said, "I think that it's just been a continual process, obviously accelerating by changing the central character, but the ideas, the locomotive of ideas that drive the film, are the same. An undercover CIA operative is accused of being a Russian
mole, and has to go on the run to defend himself. That's been the same since day one. The tone of the film has changed in this evolution. In the same way, I guess, as – you know – action thrillers have changed along the lines of the
Bond films and the
Bourne films". On February 19, 2009, Liev Schreiber was reported to play the role of Ted Winter, Evelyn Salt's friend and colleague in the CIA. Three days later, Chiwetel Ejiofor was named as CIA Officer Peabody, who is in pursuit of Salt. Noyce said Ejiofor, whom he first saw in
Dirty Pretty Things, seemed to have the "intelligence and disarming sort of obsessiveness" that a
counter-intelligence officer would need.
August Diehl, who played Salt's husband Mike Krause, came after a recommendation from Jolie's partner
Brad Pitt, who had worked with Diehl in
Inglourious Basterds, and
Daniel Olbrychski was chosen for Orlov because
Andrei Konchalovsky told Noyce that such an evil Russian character could only be played by a Polish actor.
Filming On a budget of $130 million,
principal photography took place mostly on location in New York City and Washington, D.C. from March to June 2009. Noyce decided to avoid "typical postcard views of Washington, D.C." to reflect "the more day-to-day environment of massive federal buildings inhabited by the typical bureaucrat". The opening sequence in North Korea was shot at the
Floyd Bennett Field, with an extra who had experience with
prisoner exchanges acting as a consultant. Salt's rendezvous with Orlov was shot on the
Frying Pan, a former lighthouse ship, now moored in the Hudson River, at 26th Street in New York. The outside of the KA training facility was the
Makaryev Monastery in Russia, while the interior was the
Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection in New York's
East Village, where the funeral was also shot. Filming for a chase sequence took place on Water Street in
Albany, New York, near the
Interstate 787 ramp, between April and May. Studio production took place at
Grumman Studios in
Bethpage, New York.
Steven Zaillian was brought for uncredited rewrites. Filming also took place on 157th St and Riverside Drive in the upper Manhattan neighborhood of
Washington Heights. Some scenes were also filmed outside of Manhattan, including
the Bronx,
Queens, and
Staten Island, and in
Westchester County. After Jolie had just given birth to twins, she spent time training before filming to get fit to perform almost all of the stunts herself. Bonaventura said, "She is so prepared and so ready and gung-ho, she'll do any stunt. We had her jumping out of helicopters, shooting, jumping off of all sorts of things and infiltrating places that are impossible to infiltrate". Salt's fighting style was described as a mixture of
Muay Thai,
Shaolin Kung-Fu, and
Jeet Kune Do, which was considered by the stunt team the most suitable for Jolie's physique, and
Krav Maga, for its rawness and aggressiveness. Noyce wanted to film the scene where Salt hangs from the edge of the building in a studio with
chroma key, but Jolie insisted on doing it herself in the actual location. On May 29, 2009, filming was temporarily halted after Jolie suffered a minor head injury while filming an action scene. She was taken to a hospital as a precautionary measure and released on the same day with no serious injuries, allowing filming to resume. Salt's escape after being captured in St. Bartholomew's originally involved her jumping off a building into a window-cleaning machine, but budgetary constraints caused the scene to be changed into a car chase. Computer-generated imagery (CGI) was used extensively throughout the film to create environments and elements, such as bullet holes and flames. More dangerous objects such as a
taser or the handcuffs used to strangle Winter were also made from CGI. Five companies were responsible for
visual effects. The two most involved were
CIS Vancouver and
Framestore. CIS Vancouver recreated the White House since the crew did not have permission to shoot in the building, and made a digital elevator shaft for the scene where Salt goes down into the White House bunker. Framestore was responsible for the assassination attempt on the Russian president, which combined actual shots of St. Bartholomew's Church, a digital recreation of the church's interior, and scenes with actor Olek Krupa falling down a collapsing floor. Female CIA officers were consulted about the creation of disguises, leading to the scene where Salt undergoes subtle changes to disguise herself as a Czech. The "sweet and caring" blonde Salt dyeing her hair black would represent the shift to Chenkov, the menacing Russian agent. For the scene where Salt disguises herself as a major, pictures of Angelina Jolie were treated on
Adobe Photoshop to create a believable male version, with the resulting image being used by the make-up team as an inspiration for the
prosthetics. The film's test screenings were poor. Sony brought in producer and slate co-financier Joseph M. Singer, former head of Universal's Motion Picture Group, to oversee a rewrite and reshoots. Jolie said he made the film "more comprehensible" to moviegoers. Singer was paid an exorbitant price at the time, $2 million, for two months of work. Subsequently, he praised Noyce and di Bonaventura, stating his contributions were minimal.
Versions Director Phillip Noyce has said that, due to the extensive usage of flashbacks, "there was always going to be a mountain of alternative material that would not fit into the theatrical version". The film ended up having two extra versions, the director's cut, and the extended cut – which Noyce refers to in his
audio commentary as the film's original cut – both included on the
DVD and
Blu-ray disc deluxe editions. The director's cut was described by Noyce as "my own personal take on the material, free from the politics and restrictions of producers, studio, or censorship ratings". Four minutes of film were added, leading to a running time of 104 minutes. More flashbacks were added, and the violence was amped up, for example, Mike being drowned rather than shot to death. The ending is also different; in the bunker scene, Winter kills the president instead of only knocking him unconscious. Noyce has described the ending as “an ending, yet just a beginning—one that turns the entire story on its head.” This refers to the final scene, in which a newsreel voiceover announces that the newly elected President of the United States has officially declared Salt dead and is embarking on a peacekeeping mission to Moscow. The scene also mentions him laying flowers at the plane crash site that claimed the lives of his father, mother, and sister years earlier, suggesting that he himself may be one of the KA agents. The extended cut increases the running time by only one minute, but rewrites the plot by removing, rearranging, and adding scenes. ==Soundtrack==