50 Fun Facts About Chicago (2002 Film)

How many Academy Awards did Chicago win in 2003?

Best Picture headed the list, along with Best Supporting Actress for Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Chicago was the first musical to win Best Picture since which 1968 film?

The 34-year gap ended a drought that even Cabaret, Bob Fosse's 1972 Oscar winner, could not break.

Who plays Roxie?

Theron, Applegate, Marisa Tomei, Mira Sorvino and Jennifer Aniston were among those considered for the part.

Who plays Velma?

She opens the film with 'All That Jazz' moments before her arrest.

Who plays Billy, the smooth-talking lawyer?

He won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for the role.

Which star was offered the lawyer role and turned it down?

Travolta had famously passed on Chicago once before, when Bob Fosse's version was in development.

Which pop star was considered for the lawyer role before Harvey Weinstein objected?

Weinstein worried the singer would draw more attention than the rest of the cast.

Who plays Matron 'Mama' Morton?

Her number 'When You're Good to Mama' lays out the jail's system of bribes.

Who plays Roxie's devoted husband Amos?

He earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Which song is Amos's solo about being ignored by everyone?

It follows the press shrugging him off after Roxie's pregnancy announcement.

Who plays heiress Kitty Baxter?

Her arrest instantly pulls the press and the lawyer away from Roxie.

Kitty Baxter steals the headlines after killing her husband and whom?

Roxie wins the spotlight back by announcing she is pregnant.

What role does Taye Diggs play?

His shadowy master of ceremonies introduces each musical number.

Christine Baranski plays which sensationalist reporter?

In the film she is a radio personality as well as a newspaperwoman.

Dominic West plays which character, Roxie's lover and victim?

He admits he lied about knowing the nightclub manager just to sleep with her, and she shoots him.

What is the occupation of Roxie's lover?

He had promised to introduce her to the manager of the Onyx club.

Who directed Chicago, in his feature directorial debut?

He also choreographed the film and later directed Nine, Into the Woods and Mary Poppins Returns.

Who wrote the screenplay?

Condon's script presents the musical numbers as fantasies inside Roxie's head.

Who composed the music, to Fred Ebb's lyrics?

Kander and Ebb modelled each number on a traditional vaudeville act or performer.

Who directed and choreographed the original 1975 Broadway production?

He planned to film it himself after Cabaret but died first; his jazz style is all over the 2002 movie.

The film's credits include a dedication to Fosse, his wife Gwen Verdon and which Broadway producer?

Fryer, Verdon and Fosse had bought the rights from the playwright's estate after her death in 1969.

In which city was the film actually shot?

Principal photography ran from December 2001 to April 2002 at sites including Casa Loma and the Elgin Theatre.

The courtroom scenes were filmed in which landmark building?

The building is the home of the Law Society of Ontario, making it a fitting stand-in for a Cook County courtroom.

Which journalist wrote the 1926 play on which the musical is based?

She covered the real trials for the Chicago Tribune and later refused for years to sell the musical rights.

Roxie was modelled on which real accused murderer of 1924?

Her husband bankrupted himself paying for her defence, and she dumped him the day after her acquittal.

Velma was based on which real cabaret singer and society divorcée?

She even made a cameo in the 1927 silent film version of the story.

What was the title of the 1942 Ginger Rogers film adapted from the same play?

Under the Hollywood Production Code, its Roxie had to be innocent of the killing.

Which studio produced Chicago?

The Producers Circle and Germany's Kallis Productions were co-producers.

At which nightclub does Velma perform 'All That Jazz' in the opening scene?

The spotlight lingers on the empty spot where her sister should be in the double act.

In which year is the film set?

The real trials that inspired the story were held in Chicago that same year.

Roxie first persuades Amos to tell police he shot whom?

He recants as soon as the police reveal the dead man's name and the affair comes out.

What does Roxie fake to win back the press's attention?

She cruelly tells Amos the truth only after her acquittal.

Which two English words does the Hungarian inmate Hunyak know?

She is the only woman on Murderess' Row who insists she is innocent.

What happens to Hunyak, the one inmate who maintains her innocence?

She becomes the first woman executed in Cook County history, which scares Roxie into rehiring her lawyer.

Which number accompanies Flynn turning the trial into a media circus?

A Japanese rock band, Buck-Tick, later named a 2010 album after the song.

Which number stages Roxie's press conference as a ventriloquist act?

The lawyer dictates a new version of events while Roxie mouths along as his dummy.

Who secretly tampered with Roxie's diary to discredit the prosecution?

The trick freed both his clients at once: Velma had traded the diary for amnesty.

What eclipses Roxie's acquittal moments after it happens?

The press sprints away from her on the courthouse steps, exactly as it had once abandoned Velma.

What do Roxie and Velma finally do in the finale?

The audience for their murderesses' act includes Flynn, Mama Morton and the jurors.

Chita Rivera, who cameos as Nickie, originated which role on Broadway in 1975?

Gwen Verdon, Fosse's wife, played Roxie opposite her in the original production.

Which duet for Velma and Mama was filmed but cut, surviving as a DVD extra?

It was restored for an extended version shown on NBC in 2005.

Roughly how much did Chicago gross worldwide?

At the time it was the highest-grossing film never to reach No. 1 or No. 2 in a North American weekend.

Which later film took Chicago's record as the highest-grossing live-action musical?

The ABBA musical arrived in 2008, six years after Chicago.

Alongside Moulin Rouge!, which 2002 film is Chicago credited with helping revive the movie musical?

The Eminem drama opened a month before Chicago's limited release.

The performer playing Velma won which Academy Award?

She also collected the BAFTA and the Critics' Choice award in the same category.

The real woman behind Roxie reportedly played which record for two hours after the killing?

Only then did she phone her husband to say she had shot a man who 'tried to make love to her'.

In 2014 the revival passed which show to become Broadway's second-longest-running ever?

Only The Phantom of the Opera has run longer; the revival opened in 1996.

Where did Chicago hold its world premiere on December 10, 2002?

It then opened in just 77 North American theaters on December 27 before expanding to 2,701 after the Oscars.

In 'Cell Block Tango', how did Mona, played by Mýa, kill her artist boyfriend?

Each of the six merry murderesses gets a verse explaining her crime.

Velma is jailed for killing her husband and whom?

She caught the two in bed together, leaving a gap in her vaudeville double act.