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FILM 1645: THE FOUNDER

TRIVIA: The original McDonalds, as depicted in the film, is actually located at 1398 North E St., San Bernardino, CA 92405. The owner of Juan Pollo Chicken purchased the site and has restored it to a McDonalds museum. The oldest remaining Golden Arches-styled McDonalds (1953) is still in operation at 10207 Lakewood Blvd., Downey, California 90241.

The company Kroc worked for prior to founding McDonalds, Prince Castle, still exists and supplies McDonalds with much of its equipment

While most productions shoot a minimum of 12+ hours per day, The Founder frequently shot for between 8-10 hours. This was due to the fact that John Lee Hancock came very well prepared and didn't overshoot anything he liked from the first take. Adding to the fact that the whole film was shot in only 22 days, this makes for an incredibly rare shoot.

Tom Hanks turned down the role of Ray Kroc and Michael Keaton took the part. The opposite happened in Philadelphia (1993) when Keaton turned down the role of Andrew Beckett and Hanks took the part, eventually winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.

The McDonald's back office set was built on the same stage as Ray Kroc's office. in order to create genuine reactions to the phone conversations, the props and sound departments rigged the phones with speakers so that both sets of phone conversations could be filmed simultaneously.

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen liked the script very much and wanted to direct the film, but they had to turn it down because of schedule conflicts with Hail, Caesar! (2016).

The on-screen flies that were attracted to the smell at McDonald's were actually Cocoa Krispies. They were poured in front of a powerful fan in order to make it look like swarms of flies.

The screenplay for this film was featured in the 2014 Blacklist; a list of the "most liked" unmade scripts of the year.

Ray Kroc's "discovery" of McDonalds in 1952 was not his first attempt at franchising (taking over) a Southern California restaurant. According to the book, In N Out Burger, by Stacy Perman, Kroc approach L.A.'s Apple Pan restaurant in 1949, and Carl Karcher of Carl's Jr., prior to convincing the McDonald brothers.

The film's release date was intentionally pushed back to December so it would have a better chance with the Academy Awards. Ironically, it was not nominated for a single Academy Award.

When Keaton's character follows Route 66 across the map to San Bernadino, it's obviously not a map that is historically accurate for the 1950's as it shows Irvine, CA which did not yet exist as a city back then.