Saltburn
We're all about to lose our minds.
Country
Production
Budget
$20 000 000
Revenue
$21 026 167
Website
Director
Actors
Scenario
Producer
Operator
Composer
Anthony B. Willis
Artist
Suzie Davies, Philippa Brocklehurst, Elena Real-Davies
Audition
Editing
Victoria Boydell
All team (101)
All team (101)
Short description
Oliver Quick is a student at Oxford who has trouble fitting in among his wealthy peers. He becomes close to Felix Catton, a charming and aristocratic classmate, who invites him to spend the summer at Saltburn, the sprawling estate of his eccentric family. What begins as a chance to belong gradually turns into something more complicated as Oliver is drawn deeper into the household and its inhabitants.
Saltburn was directed and written by Emerald Fennell, following her debut feature Promising Young Woman and preceding her 2026 adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Barry Keoghan plays Oliver, with Jacob Elordi as Felix. Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant appear as Felix's parents, Elspeth and Sir James Catton, while Alison Oliver plays Venetia Catton and Archie Madekwe plays Farleigh Start. Fennell produced alongside Margot Robbie and Josey McNamara, and the film runs 131 minutes.
Released in November 2023, the film had a production budget of about 20 million dollars and grossed roughly 21 million dollars worldwide, a modest return relative to its cost. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from around 263,000 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 6.9 out of 10 from over 3,000 votes. A critics' rating of 6.8 out of 10 from 301 reviews places it close to the audience scores, indicating broadly similar levels of approval from both groups.
What's left behind the scenes
- Barry Keoghan approached his work in this film as if he were playing five different characters. He numbered each scene “Oliver 1,” “Oliver 2,” “Oliver 3,” and so on, depending on which Oliver he was supposed to be playing in that scene. The actor kept five notebooks in which he recorded all of his character’s mannerisms, gestures, and expressions depending on which version he was at the time. It often happened that Keoghan had to play several different “versions” of Oliver on the same shooting day.
- Following the scene where Oliver tells Felix that he still intends to take the exams despite bad news from home, the scene shows him and those present encountering a large group of students (including Felix) with inflatable balloons, and confetti and streamers begin to be thrown at them. This tradition was indeed observed at Oxford, where students would lie in wait with confetti and streamers for their friends after exams. The tradition began in the 1970s. By the mid-2000s, when the film is set, it still existed, but was already fading (due to the significant amount of litter and the cost of cleaning the premises), and today the university administration does not officially recognize the tradition.
- Felix (played by Jacob Elordi) and his sister have similar tattoos – stars from their family crest. The inscription “Carpe Diem,” or “Seize the day,” on Felix is also taken from the crest.
- Director Emerald Fennell lent some items from her own wardrobe to the film's cast, pieces she wore in 2006 and 2007, specifically a women's jacket by Alexander McQueen that she sported while at Oxford, and which Rosamund Pike's character wears in the film.
- Some changes were made for filming at the Saltburn estate – for example, a shared bathroom was added to the rooms occupied by Felix and Oliver, and a large bathtub was installed there to accommodate Jacob Elordi.
- The body of Barry Keoghan, who played Oliver, was used as the basis for creating the Minotaur statue.
- As part of preparation for filming, Barry Keoghan spent a weekend with Michael McNulty (the director, screenwriter, editor, actor, and producer). The preparation included practicing a Liverpudlian accent and consuming a large amount of beer.
- The scene in which Oliver undresses and masturbates on Felix's grave was conceived by Barry Keoghan himself. Initially, it was supposed that he would remain clothed in this scene and show everything through gestures, but on the day of filming, the actor asked to close the set to outsiders and said he would improvise.
- According to Jacob Elordi, before filming began, he spent a month living in the Chelsea neighborhood of London to observe its affluent residents firsthand, whose lifestyle resembled that of the character he was to play.
- According to Carey Mulligan, Emerald Fennell initially offered her a different role than the one she ultimately played. Mulligan read the script and realized she wanted to portray a different character than the one offered, and Fennell accommodated her.
- The number of artificial sounds in the film has been minimized. This was not easy to achieve due to the unusual frame format. The film's creative team had to hide microphones directly on the set – just outside the camera's field of view. In the scene with the grave, for example, microphones were buried in the ground.
- The moment when Rosamund Pike's character discovers Felix dead in the labyrinth is not shown in the film; only her scream, full of pain, is heard. Emerald Fennell didn't intend to show this moment, believing that depicting a mother's pain on screen is unethical. Regardless, Rosamund Pike and Jacob Elordi still played out the scene properly, even knowing it wouldn't make the final cut.
- During rehearsals, Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan came up with a conversation between their characters themselves. The director, screenwriter, and producer Emerald Fennell liked the improvisation so much that she decided to include it in the script. In a similar vein, Pike jokingly told Fennell that her character thinks the song “Common People” by the British band “Pulp” was written about her. This joke also sparked some improvisations.
- The maze, which plays such an important role in the plot, does not actually exist. The film's production designer, Susie Davies, specifically enlisted leading expert Adrian Fisher to create it for the film. Given the impossibility of creating the entire maze, it's not surprising that he only built the central part with surrounding passages, while the rest was the product of computer technology.
- According to Barry Keoghan, he was more embarrassed about dancing on camera than about dancing naked.
- During filming, Rosamund Pike lived at the Saltburn estate.
- In preparation for filming, Jacob Elordi read Evelyn Waugh’s 1944 novel, *Brideshead Revisited*, at the suggestion of Emerald Fennell.
- Felix's clothing style, as portrayed by Jacob Elordi, bears a resemblance to Prince Harry's style during the period in which the film's events unfold. Costume designer Sophie Canale reviewed old photos of Harry with friends and his then-girlfriend Chelsea Davy, and incorporated some elements of their costumes into her work on Felix and his Oxford friends' outfits.
- Farley's hairstyle, as performed by Archie Madekwe, is reminiscent of Corbin Bleu's hairstyle in Kenny Ortega's musical "High School Musical" (2006). Madekwe specifically had extensions put in to achieve a greater resemblance. Barry Keoghan's hairstyle in the first third of the film copies Zac Efron's hairstyle from the same musical, and he also had extensions put in.
- Felix, played by Jacob Elordi, has an eyebrow piercing. Emerald Fennell insisted on this detail, having seen similar piercings on men in nightclubs in 2007, the year some of the film's events take place. The piercing was fake. Fennell faced significant pressure from the studio regarding this piercing, with management demanding its removal, but Fennell stood her ground. It ended with a compromise: Elordi’s character wore the piercing at Oxford but removed it when he returned home, supposedly because his mother disapproved.
- Venice’s hair, played by Alison Oliver, was deliberately damaged by bleaching, as the filmmakers decided it better suited the image of a socialite from that period (summer 2007). Oliver was offered a wig, but she chose to sacrifice her hair for authenticity.
- The original finale was supposed to show Oliver getting out of bed in a robe and pajamas and going to the dining room, where he would be served eggs for breakfast. This would have 'circularized' the entire story and linked the finale to the beginning and Oliver's first breakfast at the estate. Director Emerald Fennell decided that this ending wouldn't work and instead showed a naked Oliver dancing in the estate to the song 'Murder on the Dancefloor' (2001) by Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
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