Stories from the set

The screenplay, adapted from Michael Punke's 2003 novel of the same name, was written by Iñárritu and Mark L. Smith, and is partly based on the life of the frontiersman Hugh Glass.

Tom Hardy claims he never reads scripts. When he was preparing for the film Splinter Cell (2017), based on the stealth action video game series created by writer Tom Clancy, Leonardo DiCaprio persuaded him to read the script for The Revenant. Hardy read half of the script and agreed to take part in the filming.

The film's creators allotted 9 months for shooting, although the filming process itself took only 80 days. The unusual duration of filming was due to weather conditions, the remoteness of the filming locations, and the desire of director Alejandro González Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki to shoot only in natural light to achieve maximum realism. Each day, only a few hours were spent filming, so each shooting day had to be planned in advance.

Leonardo DiCaprio was offered a role in the film «Steve Jobs» (2015), but he chose to play the lead in «The Revenant».

Filming in Canada fell behind schedule, and the snow melted. The crew had to move to southern Argentina, where snow was still on the ground at that time.

Sean Penn was initially cast as John Fitzgerald, but he had to drop out due to his involvement in another project. So the role of Fitzgerald went to Tom Hardy.

As in the film «Inception» (2010), «The Revenant» stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy and Lukas Haas.

«The Revenant» became the first feature film shot on the new 6.5k ARRI 65 camera.

In 1971, the film «Man in the Wilderness» was released, whose plot somewhat resembles the story of Hugh Glass, although the characters there were given different names. «Man in the Wilderness» starred Richard Harris and John Huston.

Work on the project was halted until 2010, when Mark L. Smith adapted Punke's book for Steve Golin's company «Anonymous Content». In May 2010, Mark L. Smith said that John Hillcoat would direct the film and that negotiations were underway with Christian Bale for the lead role. Hillcoat left the project in October of that year. There was an idea to have Jean-François Richet direct, but the contract was ultimately signed with Alejandro González Iñárritu.