When Worlds Collide - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of When Worlds Collide or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to When Worlds Collide

[albert]

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was originally considered for the part later taken by Richard Derr.

[leo]

The spaceship set was approximately 100 feet long and 30 feet wide.

[bryan]

The guy bringing the rifles into the dormitory is Kirk Alyn - the original Superman from the weekly serials.

[scarlett]

The differential analyzer, a mechanical analog computer seen in this film, was shot at UCLA. It was built in 1947 by General Electric at a cost of $125,000 ($1.5M in 2020). By the time of this film, UCLA had a total of four of these machines.

[phyllis]

The Bible verse at the beginning of the film is from Genesis 6:12-13, King James Version.

[kenneth]

The single engine airplane that Richard Derr is flying in the beginning of the film is a Spartan 7W Executive.

[cassandra]

Paramount rushed this film into production after the success of Destination Moon (1950).

[victoria]

Just after the take off a fuel check is made. The fuel gauge is the same as one might find in a 1950s car: 1/4, 1/2, full, etc. A liquid-fueled airplane or spaceship would measure its precious fuel precisely in pounds.

[terry]

When the effects of Zyra are shown there is a shot of a volcano erupting where the side of the peak falls outward. This same shot was used in other George Pal films, including The Time Machine (1960) and Atlantis: The Lost Continent (1961).

[kim]

The rocket was designed by space artist Chesley Bonestell.

[toni]

In the matte painting at the end, an immense artificial structure of some sort can be seen on the left, yet no one appears to notice it.

[duane]

In the final shot we see the Ark passengers disembarking with an obvious painted background depicting Zyra. This bad painting was tacked on for the film's sneak previews. Originally, producer George Pal wanted to depict Zyra as a miniature set, but Paramount shipped the film out before this could be done.

[lena]

The rights to the story by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer were originally bought in 1933 by Paramount, when director Cecil B. DeMille was planning a related project called "The End of the World." DeMille had hoped to rush the project into production after filming wrapped on This Day and Age (1933), but the script was never even written and the studio scrapped the project.

[mathew]

In the mid 1970's, producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown worked on a remake of the film, with a screenplay by Anthony Burgess and with Steven Spielberg as another producer and as director attached. It never got off the ground as such but evolved into the film Deep Impact (1998) about attempts to stop a comet that is on a collision course with Earth. Zanuck and Brown were producers and Spielberg was an executive producer of that latter film.

[violet]

Roy Thinnes makes an appearance after the first planet passes. He comes in and asks "Are there any more for the helicopter?"

[addison]

Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin saw this film as a ten-year-old, and has cited it as "the beginning of the emergence of philosophy" in his life. In The Dialogue: An Interview with Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (2007), he explains that right after he and a boyhood friend saw the film, they spent hours discussing the end of the world. Rubin mentions this memory while explaining that Steven Spielberg approached him to do the screenplay for a remake of "When Worlds Collide," and that it eventually evolved into Deep Impact (1998), with Rubin credited as one of its two writers.

[chris]

George Pal wanted to film the novel's sequel, "After Worlds Collide," which depicted the struggle of human survivors on the alien planet. However, the failure of his film Conquest of Space (1955), and the declining health of uncredited executive producer Cecil B. DeMille, damaged his relationship with Paramount, and the sequel was never made.

[victoria]

There is a shot toward the end of a group of people sitting around a country store listening to the radio. Among them the little boy and dog later rescued by helicopter. The same shot shows up in The War of the Worlds (1953)