This movie was pulled from theaters in Japan after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit in March 2011.
For a while, it seemed that Matt Damon would be unable to appear in this movie due to his commitment to The Adjustment Bureau (2011) so he suggested to Clint Eastwood to consider Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Hayden Christensen, or Josh Brolin in his place. Instead, Eastwood was able to adjust the filming schedule so that Damon could appear in both movies.
In a February 2010 interview with the U.K.'s "Daily Telegraph", Clint Eastwood described this movie as "three different stories with people who have gone through some sort of stressful time and it's about how they sort of converge together. Much like a lot of French movies have been in the past, where the stories kind of converge together, and destiny drives each person towards the other."
One of the few movies executively produced by Steven Spielberg that has neither an Amblin Entertainment nor DreamWorks Pictures symbol in the ads representing his involvement. (The Amblin logo does appear at the end of the movie.)
Clint Eastwood told LA Weekly, "There's a certain charlatan aspect to the hereafter, to those who prey on people's beliefs that there's some afterlife, and mankind doesn't seem to be willing to accept that this is your life and you should do the best you can with it and enjoy it while you're here, and that'll be enough. There has to be immortality or eternal life and embracing some religious thing. I don't have the answer. Maybe there is a hereafter, but I don't know, so I approach it by not knowing. I just tell the story."