The Lovely Bones - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Lovely Bones or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Lovely Bones

[jamie]

In the school corridor scene, Clarissa (A.J. Michalka) mentions to Susie (Saoirse Ronan) that the name Othello sounds like a mint. "Oddfellows" is a popular brand of mint in Peter Jackson's home country of New Zealand.

[carl]

There is a poster advertising J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" books at the bookstore. Writer, Producer, and Director Peter Jackson's previous movies were The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

[cassandra]

Throughout this movie, in the "in-between", there are several items that appear that correlate to George Harvey's other victims. A sunhat, a rainbow ball, holly, and a flower to name three. You see them first in the scenes, where Denise "Holly" Le Ang (Nikki SooHoo) and Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) are spending time together, and again later in the movie, when the many victims are shown.

[nora]

In the first scene where Susie is seen shopping with her grandmother at the mall, George Harvey can be spotted turning right, just before the camera focuses on Ray. This can be read as George spying on Susie, as she mentions a couple of minutes after this take.

[chris]

Mark Wahlberg replaced Ryan Gosling just one day before shooting began. In preparation for the role, Gosling had gained twenty pounds, and grown out a beard. However, he vacated the role because he felt he was too young to play the part. Wahlberg, who had just completed shooting The Happening (2008), another production in Pennsylvania, became available just in time to accept the role of Jack Salmon.

[javier]

Despite the fact that the violence in the novel had been toned down for this movie, Stanley Tucci still had a hard time portraying George Harvey.

[tamara]

As of 2018, this movie features Stanley Tucci's only Oscar nominated performance.

[gerald]

Lynne Ramsay was interested in directing this movie, before Peter Jackson acquired the rights to the novel.

[jesse]

The main reason Ryan Gosling quit his role as Jack before filming started, was that during read-through sessions with Writer, Producer, and Director Peter Jackson and the rest of the cast, he felt that, at twenty-six, he was too young for the role. Jack was supposed to be in his late thirties. Despite repeated assurances from Jackson that he could portray Jack with proper make-up, Gosling insisted that, as a method actor, he would not be able to portray the character well enough, and was finally let go. Mark Wahlberg was brought in only one day before shooting started.

[willard]

The end credits take up fifteen minutes of the running time.

[edgar]

This movie differs greatly from the novel. Much of the adult content in the novel, including a rape sequence and Abigail's affair with the detective, was removed in order to keep this movie at a PG-13 rating. This effectively changed the target audience of this movie to pre-teens and teenagers (which was apparent in box-office records), as opposed to the adult target audience of the book.

[norma]

Susie's friend in the In-Between, who claims that her name is Holly Golightly, picked the name after a main character in the Truman Capote novel Breakfast At Tiffany's (later adapted in 1961 into a feature film starring Audrey Hepburn). The character's name was Holiday "Holly" Golightly. It is said later on in The Lovely Bones by Susie that her friend, whose real name was Denise Le Ang, "sometimes liked to be called Holly", implying that this was a chosen nickname in Holly's life on earth before the In-Between, whereas in the original novel by Alice Sebold, Holly's backstory and whether or not she went by her nickname on earth are never really gone into in detail. Coincidentally, Susie's pet dog on earth was also named "Holiday".

[kim]

George Harvey's death was originally left to the imagination after he fell off the cliff. Numerous test audiences wanted to see a more brutal ending for the character, so a last minute re-shoot was added, which shows him violently tumbling down the cliff side.

[charlie]

A.J. Michalka is the younger sister of Rose McIver's iZombie (2015) co-star Aly Michalka.

[ella]

During the sequence when Jack repeatedly calls Fenerman with the names of possible suspects, one of the names is Frank Peretti (Jack actually spells the last name for Fenerman). Frank Peretti is a best-selling author of Christian supernatural thrillers. It is more likely, however, that Peter Jackson is referencing the assistant medical examiner Frank Peretti who was called as a witness in the infamous West Memphis 3 case. Jackson discusses Peretti in the documentary he produced, West of Memphis (2012).

[kyle]

Alice Sebold, author of the novel, stated that she preferred an unknown actress for the role of Susie Salmon. After she was cast in this movie, the relatively unknown Saoirse Ronan was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Atonement (2007).

[ruby]

In the book, Susie and her love interest get intimate. This is not depicted in this movie.

[lonnie]

The cast includes two Oscar winners: Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon; and three Oscar nominees: Mark Wahlberg, Saoirse Ronan, and Stanley Tucci.

[linda]

Peter Jackson has said that he originally wanted to cast an American actress for the leading role, but was highly discouraged when the audition process began, and he couldn't find a single actress who behaved like a genuine child, rather than a child actress.