Movies & TV Facts for Kids
Behind-the-scenes facts from film and TV
'The Nightmare Before Christmas' (1993) took three years to make using stop-motion animation. At full speed the production could only complete about 70 seconds of finished film per week.
Despite being the title character, Beetlejuice appears on screen for only about 17 minutes in the entire 1988 film. Michael Keaton was given almost complete freedom to improvise the character's bizarre behavior.
In 'The Princess Bride' (1987), the 'shrieking eels' in the water were based on real moray eels. The production used live eels in tanks and filmed them close up to create the terrifying effect, then composited them with the actors.
The massive battle scene in 'Avengers: Endgame' (2019) where all the heroes arrive through glowing portals required over 700 visual effects shots. Some heroes in the background were entirely digital characters, not real actors at all.
The tight black pants worn by Olivia Newton-John at the end of 'Grease' (1978) were so small that they had to be sewn onto her on set each day. She could barely walk in them and the seam split during filming.
'Parasite' (2019), a South Korean film directed by Bong Joon-ho, became the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The director said in his acceptance speech that there was 'just one cinema' across all languages.
Disney kept real deer in its studio while animating 'Bambi' (1942) so that artists could study the animals' movements up close. Young animators were given time each day to simply sit and sketch the animals.
Elsa's ice palace in 'Frozen' was built using a special simulation called 'Matterhorn' that could realistically model how ice forms and shatters. The effect of ice growing in 'Let It Go' was completely new to animation.
When the Lumière brothers screened a film of a train arriving at a station in 1895, some audience members reportedly screamed and ran from their seats thinking the train was real. The experience of moving images on a screen was completely new to them.
'Die Hard' (1988) is set at a Christmas party, and there is a famous ongoing debate about whether it counts as a Christmas movie. Director John McTiernan has said it is not, while actor Bruce Willis has changed his answer multiple times.