While this marks Vincent Cassel's first appearance in an Astérix film, his father Jean-Pierre Cassel previously appeared in Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008) as the druid Panoramix while his now former wife Monica Bellucci portrayed Cleopatra in Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002). Moreover, the character Maccabaeus in the comic book "Asterix and the Picts" was based on Vincent Cassel's features.
While imprisoned the Empress of China says "We have two lives and the second one begins when we realize that we only have one". This quote is often attributed to the famous Chinise Philosopher Confucius.
As is tradition in Astérix stories, all names are puns:
And of course:
- Deng Tsin Qin, the rogue prince's name, is a reference to ABBA's disco hit "Dancing Queen", while Ielosubmarine is a reference to the Beatles hit "Yellow Submarine";
- Ri Qi Qi sounds 'riquiqui' ("itsy-bitsy" in English), Tat Han means 'tatane' ('slap' or 'sandal' in English), and Ban Han sounds like 'banane' ('banana' or 'big grin' in English);
- Graindemaïs and Épidemaïs mean respectively 'corn kernel' and 'corncob';
- some are obvious, like Titanix, Antivirus, Remix, Biopix, Radius, Cubitus, Sinus and Plexus;
- Abribus means "bus shelter", Lapsus means "Freudian slip", and Abdelmalix is a reference to writer/rap artist Abd al Malik;
- Ra Mo Li means "softened";
- Fu Yi reads in French "fouillis", which means clutter
And of course:
- Astérix is for "asterisk", aka little star *
- Obélix is for "obelisk"
- Assurancetourix is similar to "Full Coverage Insurance" in French
- Bonemine means "looking well"
- Ordralfabetix "alphabetical order"
- Agecanonix "very old"
- etc.
The movie cost 65 million euros, which is huge for French cinema: at the time of its release, it was in the top 10 of France's most expensive movies. Its break-even point was estimated at 6 million tickets sold, and it was reported that director Guillaume Canet would have gotten a 1 million euro bonus (on top of his EUR500k salary) if the movie had gotten to 7 million tickets sold.
While its opening week was the strongest for a French movie in 15 years, since 2008's Welcome to the Sticks (2008), with almost 1.9 million tickets sold in its first five days, it was still far short of the objective. After five weeks, it only sold 4.4 million tickets ($32.8M) in France and 1.4 millions tickets ($6.2M) in the rest of Europe. For reference, Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002) sold 14 million tickets in 2002.
The first live-action Astérix film to be a fully original story not based on one or several of the comic books. Previously, the animated films The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976) and Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion (2018) were also original stories, although the former was written and co-directed by Astérix creators René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo.