10 Things You Didn’t Know About Kingdom of Heaven

It’s near impossible for a film to be 3+ hours long and not have a serious behind the scenes featurette. The Director’s Cut of Kingdom of Heaven is an absolutely epic film that should be seen by anyone interested in historical ass-kicking and also willing to sit for long periods of time, but it takes someone special to sit through a 2+ hour featurette about the film. Well I am that special man and my liver may never forgive me for the amount of rum I drank but I made it through them and now I’m bringing you 10 Things You Didn’t Know about Kingdom of Heaven.

1. Ridley Scott had always had a quiet obsession with the Crusades as a youngster. The idea of men traveling a long distance in pursuit of something above themselves had a very “cowboy”/hero effect on him. He was much less interested in the politics and religious side of the wars but the fighting was something that always appealed to him. Like most Westerners, Ridley assumed the Muslims were the “bad guys” of the Crusades.

2. Ridley Scott had been working on Matchstick Men and also starting work on his next project titled ‘Tripoli’ with writer William Monahan. Ridley was very happy with the script and asked Monahan if he had anything involving the Crusades. Scott knew that if Monahan could write something as good as Tripoli that he could be trusted with something as epic as what he had envisioned. It just so happened that Monahan had a bit of an obsession with Baldwin of Jerusalem.

3. The three aspects of the story that influenced what would become Kingdom of Heaven were the leper King, the tenuous peace happening in Jerusalem, and the fact that Balian had some sort of relationship with Saladin and had surrendered the city of Jerusalem.

4. Ridley was determined to cast Muslim actors as the main Saracen characters. He looked at dozens and dozens of actors in France and on different Arab television.

5. FOX was always trying to get the script shortened so the movie wouldn’t be so long. One sub-plot that they wanted removed was the story involving Sibylla’s son. Eventually, Scott had Monahan write two separate scripts. One had the boy and was the one they would shoot. The other didn’t have the boy and was the script that they would give executives and others who might snitch on them.

6. They showed up to some sets and there were scores of screaming women looking for Orlando Bloom.

7. The set for Jerusalem was massive. The scale of it was beyond anything that the cast had scene before but it still a such a massive attention to detail. Shots could be done at any angle and still you would see the set. Hundreds of animals, women and children were brought in for the shots and they essentially just hung out in between scenes.

8. The flag budget alone for the film was $250,000. 1200 flags with over 600 different designs were created for the film.

9. They had a fire on set that burned one of the siege towers while everyone was away. The tower was charred black and part of the fiberglass wall was damaged. The production designers loved the look of the tower and used it in a scene the next day.

10. Large sections of the finished film were taken out or thought to be taken out for time reasons. The final siege was around 45 mins at point, according to the editor, and they had to deal with all the beheadings and violence. Add in the discussions about the boy and a large amount of the film ended up being left on the cutting room floor.