Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman signed open-ended contracts. They agreed to work on this project until Stanley Kubrick released them from it, however long that turned out to be.
Stanley Kubrick died just four days after presenting Warner Bros. with what was reported to be a final cut of the film, after a legendarily long shoot. His friends and family, as well as the cast and crew of the film, all claimed that Kubrick's death was completely unexpected and that he never seemed to be in poor health while making the film.
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman spent so long living in the UK, due to the prolonged shoot, that their 2 children acquired English accents.
The chanting at the mansion party loosely translated means: "We still pray for the mercy, the life, the peace, the health, the salvation, the scrutiny, neglection and forgiveness of the sins of God's servants, worshipers, almsgivers, benefactors of this holy site." Another line of the chanting means: "God says to his followers: A new commandment I give to you" (The original in Romanian reads: "Zis-a Doamne catre ucenicii sai: Porunca noua dau voua" There are two reasons for its incomprehensibility, as it is in a foreign language (Romanian) and the vocal track is run in reverse
The film is notoriously known for its secrecy during production and the secrecy even divided the two main stars, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. To exaggerate the distrust between their fictional husband and wife, director Stanley Kubrick would direct each actor separately and forbid them to share notes. In one painful example, for just one minute of final footage where Alice makes love to a handsome naval officer-an imaginary affair that haunts Bill over the course of the film-Kubrick demanded that Kidman shoot six days of naked sex scenes with a male model. Not only did he ask the pair to pose in over fifty erotic positions, he banned Cruise from the set and forbade Kidman to assuage her husband's tension by telling him what happened during the shoot.
Stanley Kubrick: [114] The room in the morgue visited by Bill is in wing C, room 114 (C-Rm114, or CRM-114). CRM-114 was the name of the decoding machine in Kubrick's film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), as well as the number printed on the medicine that Alex is given in A Clockwork Orange (1971).
Stanley Kubrick: [The Glare] The scene in the taxi, when paranoid thoughts are going through Tom Cruise's mind.
Stanley Kubrick: [Bathrooms] Alice is seen using the toilet early in the movie. At the party, a girl overdoses in Victor's bathroom.
Stanley Kubrick: [Dopplegangers] Thomas Gibson bears a passing resemblance to Tom Cruise (and they are in fact the exact same age).