Development
Martin Scorsese, the director of the film, in 2010In 2007, DiCaprio and Warner Bros. won a bidding war for the rights to Belfort's memoir The Wolf of Wall Street, with Belfort making $1 million off the deal.[7][8] Having worked on the film's script, Scorsese was considered to direct the film but abandoned the project to work on Shutter Island (2010).[9] He has said he "wasted five months of [his] life" without getting a green light on production dates from Warner Bros.[8] In 2010, Warner Bros. offered the directorial role to Ridley Scott, with Brad Pitt playing Belfort,[10] but the studio eventually abandoned the project.[11]
In 2012, the independent company Red Granite Pictures greenlit the project without content restrictions. Soon after, Scorsese came back on board.[12] Red Granite Pictures also asked Paramount Pictures to distribute the film;[13] Paramount agreed to do so in North America and Japan, but passed on the rest of the international market, with Universal Pictures acquiring the film's international distribution rights.[14][15]
According to Belfort,[16] Random House asked him to tone down or excise the depictions of debauchery in his memoir before publication, especially those relating to his bachelor party, which featured zoophilia, and rampant use of drugs like nitrous oxide; neither the published memoir nor the film contains references to this.[17]
In the film, most of the real-life characters' names have been changed from Belfort's original memoir. Donnie Azoff is based on Danny Porush. The name was changed after Porush threatened to sue the filmmakers. Porush maintains that much of the film is fictional and that Azoff is not an accurate depiction of him.[18][19] Former Donna Karan Jeanswear CEO Elliot Lavigne does not appear in the film, but an incident recounted in the book, in which Belfort gives Lavigne mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to save him from choking to death, is similar to a scene in the film involving Donnie. The FBI agent Patrick Denham is the stand-in for real-life Gregory Coleman,[20] and lawyer Manny Riskin is based on Ira Sorkin.[21] Belfort's first wife, Denise Lombardo, is renamed Teresa Petrillo, and his second wife, Nadine Caridi, is Naomi Lapaglia on-screen. In contrast, Mark Hanna's name remains the same as the LF Rothschild stockbroker who, like Belfort, was convicted of fraud and served time in prison.[22][23] Belfort's parents Max and Leah Belfort's names remained the same for the film.[24] The role of Aunt Emma was initially offered to Julie Andrews, who declined as she was recovering from an ankle injury, and was replaced by Joanna Lumley.[25] Olivia Wilde auditioned for the role of Naomi, but she was rejected as she was deemed "too old" for the role despite DiCaprio being a decade older than her; the role eventually went to Margot Robbie.[26] In January 2014, Jonah Hill revealed in an interview with Howard Stern that he had made only $60,000 on the film (the lowest possible SAG-AFTRA rate for his amount of work), while DiCaprio (who also produced) received $10 million.[27][28][29]
Filming
Filming began on August 8, 2012, in New York City.[30] Hill announced on Twitter that his first day of shooting was September 4, 2012.[31] Filming also took place in Closter, New Jersey, and Harrison, New York.[32][33] Vitamin D powder was used as the fake substance for cocaine in the film; Hill was hospitalized with bronchitis due to snorting large quantities during filming.[34]
Scorsese's longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who has received seven Academy Award nominations (as well as one win) for Best Film Editing, said the film would be shot digitally instead of on film.[35] Scorsese had been a proponent of shooting on film, but decided to shoot Hugo digitally because it was being photographed in 3D. Despite being filmed in 2D, The Wolf of Wall Street was originally planned to be shot digitally.[36] Schoonmaker expressed her disappointment with the decision: "It would appear that we've lost the battle. I think Marty just feels it's unfortunately over, and there's been no bigger champion of film than him."[35] After extensive comparison tests during pre-production, eventually the majority of the film was shot on film stock, while scenes that used green screen effects or low light (mainly the nighttime scenes) were shot with the digital Arri Alexa camera system.[36] The film contains 400 to 450 VFX shots.[37]
Profanity
The film set a Guinness World Record for the most instances of swearing in a motion picture.[38] It uses the word "fuck" 506 times, "cunt" three times, "twat" twice, "fuckface" once, and "prick" four times, averaging 2.81 profanities per minute.[39][40][41] The previous record holders were Scorsese's previous gangster films Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995), which had respectively had 300 and 422 uses of the word; the 1993 film Menace II Society, which had 305 uses; the 1997 British film Nil by Mouth, which had 428; and the 1999 film Summer of Sam at 435.[38] The record has since been broken by Swearnet: The Movie, which uses the word 935 times, but it still holds the record for a major theatrical release.[42]
The film's distributor in the United Arab Emirates cut 45 minutes of scenes of swearing, religious profanity, drug use, sex, and nudity, and "muted" dialogue containing expletives. The National reported that filmgoers in the UAE believed the film should not have been shown rather than being edited so heavily.[43]
