Trivia for
Munich (2005) More at IMDbPro »

• The role of Ephraim was intended for Ben Kingsley but he backed out due to a change to the ending of Steven Spielberg's earlier film The Terminal (2004). It caused the start of the production to be pushed back a few weeks later, thus conflicting with Kingsley's work schedule on Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist (2005).
  
  
• A crew truck imported from Germany and laden with heavy equipment, mysteriously caught fire during shooting in Malta, sparking fears of a possible terrorist attack. Local police attributed the fire to generators overheating due to the heat of the Maltese summer.
  
  
• Steven Spielberg was going to direct this film for a 2003 or 2004 release but shelved it when Tom Cruise became available and the duo could work on War of the Worlds (2005) instead.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [Steven Spielberg] [father] Avner's father is in jail, Avner himself is away from his wife and newborn child during the first year or so of her life.
  
  
• Guri Weinberg plays his own father. He is the son of Moshe Weinberg, the Israeli wrestling referrer and former champion who died in the massacre when Guri was just 1 month old.
  
  
• After getting the rights to George Jonas's book "Vengeance", Steven Spielberg commissioned three scripts: one from David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples, one from Charles Randolph, and one from Eric Roth. Roth's script was chosen and subsequently revised by Tony Kushner.
  
  
• Tony Kushner first declined to co-write the screenplay; he felt it was too controversial and too complicated to be his first screenplay for a feature film.
  
  
• Mosko Alkalai filmed scenes as Avner's (Eric Bana) father.
  
  
• During the scene where Avner's team joins up with the Israeli commandos in Beirut, one of the commandos introduces himself as Ehud Barak. Barak was a member of the most elite commando force of the Israeli army, sayeret matkal, before becoming a politician and eventually Israel's Prime Minister.
  
  
• When Geoffrey Rush and Eric Bana are walking on the sea-front, they pass an old man with a hat twice. That man is the Maltese actor Joe Quattromani.
  
  
• The time span between the start of production to the release date in December of 2005 was less than six months.
  
  
• The role of Avner was written with Eric Bana in mind.
  
  
• At the beginning of the scene where the team tries to assassinate Salameh in London, Eric Bana's character walks by a movie theater. One of the posters on display outside the theater is for Spielberg's friend George Lucas's film, American Graffiti (1973)
  
  
• To create the blue pastel effect in the Beirut scenes, special Fuji film stocks were used exclusively. The notable challenge for that was that it has to be processed in a Fuji lab (in this case in France) since most Technicolor labs use Kodak calibrations and a reprint is required if there was a case of a print printed to the wrong specifications.
  
  
• The film crews called the shooting of the movie as a "race against the clock". In order to have the film ready by Christmas for Academy Awards consideration, Steven Spielberg and editor Michael Kahn devised an editing schedule in which: - 1) All of the scenes in Malta and Hungary shot in twelve weeks were edited on the spot. Each day Spielberg would review an edited scene shot two days earlier. - 2) Two copies of the edited scene were sent out, one to John Williams for music and the other to Ben Burtt for sound effects. - 3) The Paris and New York scenes were edited two weeks after photography and the final cut was readied after another two weeks.
  
  
• All of Avner's four visits to the bank vault were shot in a single day alone.
  
  
• Michael Klesic had a small part in the film as a Russian athlete but it was left on the cutting room floor.
  
  
• Two days before filming his final scene, Ossie Beck, who portrayed Eliezaar Halfin, discovered that his grandfather was also in the Israeli Mossad.
  
  
• In the opening segment of the movie, there is a brief shot of two Israeli girls watching TV appearing twice. The one of the left is Steven Spielberg's daughter Sasha Spielberg.
  
  
• The painting on the wall, behind Avner, in the "safe-house" scene is 'Children Eating Grapes and a Melon' by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. The painting currently resides in Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
  
  
• The quote that Papa shares with Avner when telling him that he is being hunted is loosely taken from Ecclesiastes 9:11: "I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all."
  
  
• Actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz had left a strict instructions to his agent that he would not take any acting assignments at all as he wanted to fully concentrate on directing features. However, this film was an exception. According to him, he accepted the role of Robert because he jumped at the chance to work with Spielberg.
  
  
• The film stars a later James Bond (Daniel Craig) and one former (Michael Lonsdale) and a later (Mathieu Amalric) Bond villain. Lonsdale and Amalric's characters are father and son in film.
  
  
• "Munich" is based on _George Jonas (III)_' book "Vengeance". It purports to tell the true story of vengeance taken against the Black September terrorists using a supposed former Mossad agent named Yuval Aviv as Jonas' main source. Aviv was later shown to be a fraud who never worked for Mossad or any other Israeli security agency.
  
  
• When Avner meets with Andreas and Yvonne to find contacts, he asks them if they are Baader-Meinhof or the Red Army Fraction. Andreas is played by German actor Moritz Bleibtreu. While it's never clearly explained if the Andreas in question is intended to be Andreas Baader, Bleibtreu also later played the role of Andreas Baader (with a very similar haircut and beard) in the German production Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008).
  
  

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