FILM · 1993 · USA
Demolition Man
34 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (34)
- #001
Wesley Snipes' kicks and punches sometimes look clumsy and odd. Snipes is a genuine black belt in real life, and his kicks and punches were so fast that they blurred on camera, so the producers asked him to slow himself down.
- #002
Wesley Snipes hated the yellow dye job and shaved his head as soon as filming ended. After the film's release, professional NBA player Dennis Rodman began dyeing his hair in different colors, a look inspired by Simon Phoenix.
- #003
Sandra Bullock's costume in the Taco Bell scene was made from stones and precious gems weighing roughly forty kilos. After the fight scene outside the restaurant, when her character cheerfully jumped around re-enacting the action, her dress really began to tear, so she kept her arms at her sides after Sylvester Stallone walked away.
- #004
Nobody knew that Wesley Snipes could speak Spanish. The scene in which Phoenix mocks the warden by repeating everything he says in Spanish was not in the script. Snipes decided to do it on the day of shooting without telling anyone, so the warden's hesitation and bewildered reaction were genuine. It was kept in the film because everyone thought it was funny.
- #005
Sylvester Stallone wanted Jackie Chan to play Simon Phoenix. Chan turned down the offer because Asian audiences reacted negatively to the idea of action stars from Hong Kong or Hollywood, who always play heroes, suddenly taking on villain roles. The part was then offered to Wesley Snipes, but he declined it several times until producer Joel Silver and director Marco Brambilla visited him on the set of Rising Sun (1993) to try to persuade him in person. Brambilla described what he thought the film could be and his passion for the script they had written, and the next day they got a phone call and Snipes agreed to do the film.
- #006
Sylvester Stallone was reportedly pleased with the film and called it "a great action film… ahead of its time."
- #007
In the original script, the luxury restaurant in the dinner scene was Pizza Hut, but it was changed to Taco Bell in rewrites. In some versions outside the United States, all references to Taco Bell were changed to Pizza Hut because the former was almost unknown in most countries outside the US at the time. This involved both dubbing and replacing the logos during post-production. Taco Bell survives only in the end credits sequence. In both the Dutch and Swedish versions the subtitles still use Taco Bell, but the audio and visuals were changed as described above. Also, when subtitles were used on cable television, references to Taco Bell were changed to Pizza Hut.
- #008
Sylvester Stallone displayed copies of the frozen John Spartan at Planet Hollywood restaurants. He was one of the original investors in the restaurant chain.
- #009
During filming, Rob Schneider became friends with Sandra Bullock but had reservations about his next project, "some bus movie," which he did not think would succeed. Speed (1994) went on to be one of the following year's most critically and financially successful films.
- #010
In the underground garage where John (Sylvester Stallone) meets Edgar (Denis Leary), the word "Lofaszt" can be seen scrawled above the air duct. It is a Hungarian curse word meaning "horse penis," but with the T at the end of the word it actually means "fuck no." It is also famously spoken by Edward James Olmos to Harrison Ford in Blade Runner (1982).
- #011
In interviews, Sylvester Stallone stated that he had no idea how the three seashells worked, but suggested that the idea behind them was that two could be used like chopsticks or interlocked to remove waste from the body, while the third could be used to scrape off what remained. No explanation was given for how they would be cleaned or sterilized between uses.
- #012
Denis Leary's role was rewritten after he was cast as the eager and rebellious resistance leader Edgar Friendly. The writers Daniel Waters, Robert Reneau and Peter M. Lenkov wanted to hear Leary's rant.
- #013
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Sandra Bullock spoke about working with Sylvester Stallone: "We were alone together, but at a certain point I became like his little sister. He'd hit the trailer with golf clubs at midnight: 'Come out and play.' You know, he'd want to hit golf balls at midnight."
- #014
The opening set was inspired by the Los Angeles riots, which took place only six months before filming began.
- #015
The opening scene (about 5 minutes) included the actual demolition of one of the buildings of the now-defunct Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company in Louisville, Kentucky. MTV held a film tie-in contest in which the grand prize winner pressed the button that triggered the explosion.
- #016
The title is taken from the song of the same name by The Police. Hence the use of Sting to remake the film's song.
- #017
Hungarian science fiction writer István Nemere says that much of Demolition Man is based on his 1986 novel Holtak Harca (War of the Dead). In the novel, a terrorist and a counter-terrorism soldier are cryogenically frozen, and when they awaken in the twenty-second century they find that violence has been cleansed from society. Nemere claimed that a committee proved that seventy percent of the film was identical to the book. He chose not to sue because hiring a lawyer and fighting the major Hollywood powers in the United States would have been too expensive for him. He also claimed that after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Hollywood plagiarized the works of many Eastern European writers, and that he knew the person allegedly responsible for illegally selling his idea to the filmmakers.
- #018
The novelization reveals that Associate Bob (Glenn Shadix) is a eunuch. Dr. Raymond Cocteau (Sir Nigel Hawthorne) had him castrated to prevent him from becoming too ambitious.
- #019
To celebrate the film's 25th anniversary, Taco Bell recreated the 2032 San Angeles version of its restaurant at its location at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con.
- #020
Adrienne Barbeau is the voice of the computer. She also voiced the computer in The Thing (1982).
- #021
(At about 45 minutes) The magnetic accelerator used by Wesley Snipes in the Museum Armory scene (likely resembling a railgun or coilgun) is based on the Heckler & Koch G11, a prototype weapon that was the world's most advanced rifle for the German Army and fired caseless ammunition (bullets, not the iron slugs).
- #022
Sir Nigel Hawthorne is said to have gotten along with neither Sylvester Stallone nor Wesley Snipes.
- #023
Demolition Man's fully armored action figure is actually a repainted He-Man action figure.
- #024
In Blade Runner (1982), the city was going to be named San Angeles.
- #025
When Simon Phoenix's criminal record is examined, one of the first entries on the list of crimes reads 'tax evasion.' In real life, Wesley Snipes would be imprisoned for tax evasion from 2010 to 2013.
- #026
Lenina Huxley's name is a combination of Lenina Crowne and Aldous Huxley. Crowne is a character in Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World" (1932), a novel about a future society in which everything is predetermined for you (among other reasons) so as not to disturb others, and in which even showing mild emotion is considered unusual and possibly even illegal. Crowne's first name, Lenina, was chosen by Aldous Huxley after the nickname of the Soviet Union's first dictator, Vladimir Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov).
- #027
Filming began with a $45 million budget and a 72-day production schedule, but the film started falling behind schedule almost from the start. Three days into shooting, Sandra Bullock had to replace Lori Petty, and a shoulder injury kept Sylvester Stallone out for nine days of recovery. Heavy rains and a burning soundstage caused so many delays that the film went through a record five assistant directors and countless crew members, all of whom had to leave due to other commitments (only a dozen of the original 160 crew members were estimated to remain until the end of the film). Filming ultimately lasted 112 days and the budget rose to $77 million; at one point producer Joel Silver claimed he invited Warner Bros. executive Robert J. Anderson to oversee the production and ease some of the studio's concerns about the progress. Although the crew blamed most of the delays on first-time director Marco Brambilla, Silver defended him, stating that the film went over schedule not because of Brambilla's inexperience but because the production was difficult.
- #028
The two original choices for the roles were Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Van Damme was offered the villain role but did not want it. He agreed to play the lead if both leads were recast, so the producers tried to get Seagal to play the villain, but Seagal refused. Seagal and Van Damme later played the villain: Seagal in Machete (2010) and Van Damme in The Expendables 2 (2012), both appearing alongside Sylvester Stallone, who replaced him as the hero in this film.
- #029
The giant fireplace made the set around 105 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (40.5 to 43.3 degrees Celsius).
- #030
It was said that a sequel, "Demolition Man 2," would be made, that John Spartan and Lenina Huxley would marry, and that it would take place after this film with Jackie Chan replacing Wesley Snipes as the main villain, but the sequel never happened. There was a prequel written long ago and it was thought it would fail, so it was never made. The prequel was believed to begin with John Spartan pursuing Simon Phoenix.
- #031
Sir Nigel Hawthorne, who was inexperienced in films, took the role to prove to the producers of The Madness of King George (1994) that he could appear on screen. Hawthorne wanted to reprise his stage role in the film version. As it turned out, this was unnecessary, because Hawthorne was automatically the producers' first choice for the lead.
- #032
Peter M. Lenkov was a production assistant when he wrote the film's original draft during the 1987 Christmas holiday. It had a serious, darker tone and was to end with Spartan with a wife much older than himself. Lenkov wrote it with Mickey Rourke in mind for the lead and as the first in a series for Rourke. He sold the script to Carolco Pictures in April 1988, but his former employers Faye Schwab and Aaron Schwab threatened to sue him for story credit, partly because he wrote the draft on their company's typewriter (even though it was done outside working hours). Lenkov produced about 12 drafts of the script, and at one point reworked it for a year with Steven Seagal as the lead until Seagal withdrew. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mel Gibson also expressed interest, but Joel Silver was the one who bought the script and put it into production while Carolco was setting up Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and did not want to pay the Schwabs, and Sylvester Stallone eventually signed on. The script credit issue was finally resolved by naming the Schwabs as executive producers, even though they had nothing to do with the film.
- #033
All of the fight scenes were choreographed to be cartoonish. The violence was meant to be somewhat comedic.
- #034
(At about 5 minutes) At the start of the film, Simon Phoenix boasts that he would lose his head if it were not attached to his shoulders, and John Spartan says he will keep that in mind. Fittingly enough, this foreshadows their final confrontation in the cryo-prison, where Spartan finishes Phoenix off by freezing him and then cutting off his head.
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