1. Nope director and writer Jordan Peele told Complex that he "basically wrote" the role of Emerald for Keke Palmer. He said, "Yes, I did know off the bat that she was going to be Emerald. In fact, as soon as the character came to me, it was Keke. ... She really is that wonderful and that talented."

Screenshot from "Nope"
Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

2. In an interview with i-D, Everything Everywhere All At Once directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known collectively as the Daniels) described some of the creators and work that influenced the movie.

Michelle Yeoh in "Everything Everywhere All At Once"
A24 / Courtesy Everett Collection

Among these were the work of Kurt Vonnegut, the movies of Satoshi Kon and Hayao Miyazaki, and Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...

Screenshot from an animated film"
Buena Vista Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

..."mind-bending" movies like Groundhog Day and It's A Wonderful Life...

Screenshot from "Groundhog Day"
Columbia / courtesy Everett Collection

...and Jackass, which Scheinert noted was "really important."

Screenshot from "Jackass"
Paramount / Courtesy Everett Collection

3. The Woman King director Gina Prince-Bythewood told Polygon that Viola Davis, the film's star, "wrote a whole notebook of backstory" for her character.

Screenshot from "The Woman King"
TriStar Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Prince-Bythewood went on, "And while something like that should be for the actor, she did share some with me, and I had the other actors share their backstories."

Screenshot from "The Woman King"
TriStar Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

4. Ruben Östlund told Vanity Fair that he was inspired to make Triangle of Sadness, a satire of the rich and inept that kicks off with one character attempting to secure a modeling gig, when he met his wife, a fashion photographer, eight years ago. Östlund said, "I got very curious about her profession because it's a kind of industry that you have been looking out on from the outside."

Screenshot from "Triangle of Sadness"
Neon / Courtesy Everett Collection

5. While filming the viking epic The Northman, star Alexander Skarsgård wore just one pair of boots that costume designer Linda Muir repaired with leather as needed, according to the New Yorker. Director Robert Eggers commented, "More impressive than the Vikings doing all the things they did was that they did it in, like, moccasins."

Screenshot from "The Northman"
Focus Features / Courtesy Everett Collection

6. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sandra Bullock initially rejected the lead role in The Lost City, but decided to sign on when the studio agreed to make some alterations to the script. Namely, she requested that her character, a popular romance novelist, become a stronger protagonist, and that her love interest, played by Channing Tatum, was given more traditionally feminine characteristics. Bullock said, "I love that there’s a man in it willing to be many aspects of himself that weren’t traditionally shown in films like this because they had to be the action hero."

Screenshot from "The Lost City"
Paramount Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

7. In an interview with Newsweek, Fresh director Mimi Cave said that Sebastian Stan, who plays the charismatic, sociopathic human butcher Steve, emailed her a video of him dancing while holding a knife, just to express his enthusiasm for the part.

Sebastian Stan in "Fresh"
Searchlight Pictures / Courtesy Everett Colletion

Cave had already cast him, though Stan didn't know that yet. She said of the video, which surely would've been terrifying in literally any other context, "He was just really wanting to dive into the character already."

Screenshot from "Fresh"
Searchlight Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

8. Speaking of people-eating on the silver screen: In Bones and All, cannibals known as "eaters" roam the country in search of their next gory meal. Star Taylor Russell told Entertainment Weekly that the faux human flesh she and her co-stars ate on-camera was made up of "maraschino cherries and dark chocolate sauce and things like that," if that reassures any of you audience members with slightly wobblier stomachs.

Screenshot from "Bones and All"
MGM / Courtesy Everett Collection

9. When asked in an Entertainment Weekly interview about the "most rewarding" scene in Turning Red, writer-director Domee Shi said it was the one where the protagonist, Mei, works on boy band fan art before desperately attempting to hide her sketchbook from her mother, Ming. Shi said, "I knew that she had to go into a passionate, lusty drawing spiral that gets interrupted by her mom. ... I definitely had my own secret sketchbook that to this day my mom has never found."

Screenshot from "Turning Red"
Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

10. Rian Johnson told Deadline that one of the difficulties of writing Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery was creating a character who was a tech mogul but not specifically based on any one figure from Silicon Valley. Johnson explained, "The fact that Bron’s a tech billionaire — which made a lot of sense for the story — became an obstacle in the writing. Because — I don’t think I even have to say the names — there are some obvious, real-world analogs. And the instant I started thinking about any of them too specifically, it got so boring so quickly."