The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Timing: 1:49 (109 min)

6.7/10
4140

0/10
38

0/10
0

All about film

Video 3

Photo 40

Actors and characters

Release date

2005-04-28

Country

United Kingdom, United States

Production

Touchstone Pictures, Spyglass Entertainment, Everyman Pictures, Hammer & Tongs

Genre

Adventure, Comedy, Science Fiction

Budget

$50 000 000 000

Revenue

$104 478 416 000

Website

Director

Garth Jennings

Actors

Martin Freeman, Yasiin Bey, Zooey Deschanel, Sam Rockwell, Alan Rickman, Anna Chancellor, Bill Nighy, Richard Griffiths, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber, Jay Roach, Jonathan Glickman, Nick Goldsmith, Douglas Adams, Derek Evans, Robbie Stamp

Operator

Igor Jadue-Lillo

Composer

Joby Talbot

Artist

Dean Clegg

Audition

Marcia Ross

Editing

Niven Howie
All team (156)

• John Malkovich plays the religious leader Humma Kavula; this character is not in the book, and was specifically created for the film by Adams himself.
• Jack Davenport could have played Arthur Dent.
• The film features Louis Armstrong's legendary song "What a Wonderful World." It was also used in the radio adaptation and the television series.
• The author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" has an unusual, small cameo in the film. When the design engineer gives Arthur Dent a tour of the assembly line, the planet in the background has the face of Douglas Adams, the book's author. His face is visible around the twenty-third minute of the second hour of the film.
• Douglas Adams's relatives – his daughter, brother, sister, and mother – appeared in the film.
• The screenplay for the film was started by Douglas Adams and completed by Garth Jennings and Cary Kirkpatrick after Adams' death in 2001.
• Garth Jennings' directorial debut.
• When Arthur, Ford, and Zaphod arrive on Vogosfera and queue at the window to obtain Trillian’s release form, they pass a robot that is a reference to the 1981 television series of the same name by Alan J.W. Bell. Specifically, Marvin in Bell's series looked exactly like that.
• At the very beginning of the film, Arthur Dent manages to move further away from the bulldozer scoop, to which he was lying very close.
• When the mouse-like device approaches Arthur's head, all the balls in the background change position.
• After the mouse-killing, the curtains on the windows are found drawn, although they were open before.
• When the robot Marvin picks up the miracle weapon, all the shadows change direction to the opposite one.
• John Malkovich plays the religious leader Hummu Kavula; this character is not in the book and was specifically created for the film by Douglas Adams himself.
• The author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" has an unusual, small cameo in the film. When the design engineer gives Arthur Dent a tour of the assembly workshop, the planet in the background has the face of Douglas Adams, the book's author. His face is visible around the twenty-third minute of the second hour of the film.
• In one of the episodes, Douglas Adams' mother, the screenwriter and author of the novel of the same name (1979), which served as the literary source for the screenplay, appeared on screen. It's about an old woman sitting at a cafe table set up outside, oblivious to the chaos around her. She simply sits and reads a newspaper. Director Garth Jennings gave no instructions to her or the other actors involved in the scene.
• Arthur Dent's dressing gown was the most expensive and complex piece of props made for the film, including the heads of Zaphod Beeblebrox and the eyes of Humma Kavula. The fabric for the dressing gown was imported from Turkey, and the gown itself was cut and sewn directly on set.
• The bridge of the starship "Heart of Gold" was decorated with light bulbs, so many in fact that they could not be kept lit for more than eight minutes, otherwise the set would simply catch fire.
• The scene featuring the elaborate costume party contains several references to the celebration of Douglas Adams' 42nd birthday, which took place in 1992. It was at this celebration that Adams introduced evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to actress Lalla Ward, resulting in her becoming Mrs. Dawkins. In the film, the main character is shown reading a book by Dawkins in the scene where he meets the character played by Zooey Deschanel, who in turn is dressed as Charles Darwin. Adams and Dawkins were friends.
• In one frame, on the casing of the supercomputer “Deep Thought”, you can see an “Apple Mac” logo. Douglas Adams was the owner of the first two “Apple Macintosh” computers in Great Britain, and the third was owned by Stephen Fry (he voiced the narrator and the “Guide”).
• The writing on the train cars is actually Pitman shorthand, one of the systems of stenography for the English language, created by the Englishman Isaac Pitman (1813-1897) under the name “phonography.” At one time, hundreds of thousands of office workers were trained in it.
• The author of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" has an unusual, small cameo in the film. When the design engineer gives Arthur Dent a tour of the assembly line, the planet in the background has the face of Douglas Adams, the book's author. His face is visible around the twenty-third minute of the second hour of the film.
• The writing on the train cars is actually Pitman shorthand, one of the stenography systems for the English language, created by Englishman Isaac Pitman (1813-1897) under the name "phonography." At one time, hundreds of thousands of office workers were trained in it.