Trivia

The making of the film led to a legal battle between star Mel Gibson and Voltage Pictures, because the latter wouldn't allow Gibson and original director Farhad Safinia to film scenes on location in Oxford, England. Because the film was already over budget and behind schedule, Voltage forced them to use Trinity College in Ireland as a substitute. Gibson and Safinia eventually left the project, with a new director and a new screenwriter (Todd Komarnicki) taking over. Gibson and his production company Icon Productions went to court to prevent the movie from being released, claiming that they were not allowed to finish the movie, but were unsuccessful. Gibson refused to promote the film afterwards.

Mel Gibson bought the rights to the Simon Winchester book "The Surgeon of Crowthorne" in 1999, and it took 17 years for him to get it to the screen.

At the professor's first meeting with the 'Madman', he is shown to have thought he was the superintendent of the facility rather than a patient. This was a popular story at the time, but it is, in fact, false. Dr. Murray was aware of his position well before his first visit.

Due to legal wrangles surrounding the production and completion of this film, there was a three-year delay between the start of filming and the film's eventual theatrical release.

Anthony Andrews plays Benjamin Jowett, a famous Oxford teacher and administrator as well as translator of Plato into English. He is the one who, at the committee dinner in the movie, hopes the dictionary will provide a standard to correct all the poor usage he finds in the newspapers, etc. Students at his Oxford college composed a rhyme about him:

Here come I, my name is Jowett. All there is to know I know it. I am Master of this College, What I don't know isn't knowledge!

This seems to fit very well with his characterization in the film.