20 facts you might not know about 'Face/Off'

Mike Werb and Michael Colleary first wrote Face/Off as a spec script, which is to say they weren’t commissioned to write it. However, they were able to sell the script to Warner Bros. in 1991. Werb had previously written the screenplay for The Mask, while Colleary didn’t have much success in film before or after Face/Off, though he did create the TV show The Professionals.

When writing the script, Werb and Colleary had a famous gangster movie in mind. They were inspired by the 1949 film White Heat. It stars James Cagney as a vicious criminal and Edmond O’Brien as a man who is planted in Cagney’s prison cell to infiltrate his gang. This is the movie that gave us the line, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”

Warner Bros. optioned Face/Off in 1991 — and then just sat on it. Their optioned expired in 1994, when Paramount bought the rights. Even then, it wouldn’t end up hitting theaters until 1997.

Rob Cohen was the original choice to direct Face/Off, and he was on the project for a while. Then, Face/Off went into turnaround, at which point Cohen left in order to direct Dragonheart. This opened the door for John Woo to direct.

Woo had been directing for over a decade when he got the chance to direct Face/Off. However, he had spent the bulk of his career making movies in Hong Kong. He had only made one American film before Woo was hired to direct Face/Off in 1996, and it was called Hard Target. In 1996, his second American movie, Broken Arrow, also came out.

When Face/Off was first being put together, two actors often affiliated with each other were the choices to play Sean Archer and Castor Troy. That would be Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Now, imagine those two trying to play each other. It’s probably for the best that version didn’t come to fruition.

Johnny Depp put in his name to play Sean Archer, and Paramount would have surely liked to have him. However, he ended up passing on the role after reading the script.

Michael Douglas is an executive producer on Face/Off, and to be fair, he has a history of producing films, having done so before he broke out as an actor himself. He ended up with a credit on Face/Off because of his acting, though. After the Schwarzenegger and Stallone idea fell through, Douglas was given the script in hopes that he and Harrison Ford would star together. Douglas didn’t sign on to act, but he did join to produce.

Ultimately, it was Woo who picked the actors he wanted for Sean and Castor. He chose John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, respectively. Woo must have enjoyed working with Travolta. He had costarred with him in Broken Arrow.

When he was first offered his part in Face/Off, Cage turned it down because he did not want to play the villain. Then, it was explained that for most of the film Cage would be playing Sean with Castor’s face, and he would thus be playing the hero. This intrigued Cage enough to get him to sign on.

Allen is a sensible choice, age-wise, to play the wife of Travolta’s Sean Archer. However, the studio reportedly wanted a younger actress cast, with the idea she could be a stepmother instead. Woo did not like this idea and fought to keep Allen in the role.

Cage plays Castor Troy, and he has a twin brother named Pollux Troy. The Troy parents weren’t being all that inventive with those names. They are the names of the twins that make up the Gemini constellation.

Nick Cassavetes did something they generally tell you not to do as an actor: Dramatically change your look after being hired without telling anybody. He decided to shave his head for the role of Dietrich. Luckily for him, Woo loved it.

There are a lot of big action set pieces in Face/Off, and the initial plan was to shoot them on a green screen. However, Woo and company wanted the film to be more “realistic,” or at least more visceral. As such, all of the action set pieces were shot practically, with the iconic boat chase being shot in San Pedro, California.

Woo wanted to include a scene of Adam listening to “Over the Rainbow” on headphones, which was similar to a scene from his movie Hard Boiled. However, Paramount did not want to pay for another scene to be shot, so Woo ended up paying for that scene out of his own pocket.

It’s notable that Face/Off has, well, a slash in the title. Why is that the case? Well, the studio was apparently against it, but Woo fought to keep it. He was worried that without the slash, people might think Face/Off was a hockey movie.

In spite of the wild premise, Face/Off excited moviegoers. The film debuted atop the domestic box office, and it ended up making $112.2 million domestically and $245.7 million worldwide. It ended up being the 11th-highest-grossing movie of 1997. By the way, critics also enjoyed it. Face/Off has a 92 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Face/Off was nominated for one Oscar for Best Sound Effects Editing, which it did not win. However, it won some awards at other shows. The Saturn Awards gave it Best Director and Best Writing, and at the MTV Movie Awards, it won Best Action Sequence and Best On-Screen Duo.

The Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs is a less sci-fi take on the same story as Face/Off, as Andrew Lau wanted to do a more realistic version of the same story. Thus, his characters just swapped identities as opposed to, you know, faces. Infernal Affairs was a big hit, and it was overtly adapted for the American audiences. That movie would be The Departed, which won Martin Scorsese his first Oscar for Best Picture.

Many years after the fact, in an era where no intellectual property is allowed to lie fallow, Face/Off has a sequel in the works. It was first put into the ether in 2019. In 2021, Adam Wingard was hired to direct the film, which will apparently be a direct sequel to the original.