First announced in 1998 as a project for United Artists, a sublabel of MGM[1]
It was the first project under Lion Rock Productions[2]
Woo accepted the project after he and Chang were pitched the concept by screenwriters John Rice and Joe Batteer, and producers Alison Rosenzweig and Tracie Graham[3]
Woo wanted to focus on the friendships in the story[4][5]
Woo recalled that his requests to focus on friendships was met with resistance from the writers, but MGM backed the director[6]
The script was also subjected to several edits in order to get approval and assistance from the United States Department of Defense and the United States Marine Corps; cuts included a scene where a Marine pulls fillings from a Japanese soldier's corpse, and a scene where a character kills a Japanese soldier trying to surrender[7]
Woo remembered the film shoot was rough due to the bad weather, which held up production[6]
In an effort to achieve ethnic accuracy, Native American actors were cast to play the code talkers[8]
The film suffered from delays, including one meant to distance the film from the September 11 attacks.[9]
Windtalkers was a box office bomb, earning only $77.6 million worldwide on a production budget of $115 million[10]
The film was panned by critics; Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it "a disappointing feature" that presented a superficial understanding of the relationship between the code talkers and the Marines[11]
Robert Koehler of Variety lamented that the film was "a powerful premise turned into a stubbornly flat, derivative war movie."[12]
Slate's David Edelstein found the film cliched and overly sentimental, quipping that "Woo could end up becoming the John Ford of schmaltz."[13]
As early as July 2001, Woo was attached to The Line, a period film starring Chow Yun-fat about a Chinese railroad worker who vows to get revenge on those who sold him into slavery[15]
Later reportedly titled Men of Destiny and Land of Destiny, Nicolas Cage was rumoured to be attached to the project[16][17][18]
