Face/Off Werb and Michael Colleary tried to sell to a studio from as early as 1990. The first actors who were chosen to play Sean Archer and Castor Troy were Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger respectively but John Woo instead hired John Travolta and Nicolas Cage to play those characters. It took numerous studios, producers and rewrites before John Woo became attached several years later. For the Archer character, Woo considered casting either Michael Douglas or Jean-Claude Van Damme with whom he had worked in "Hard Target". When the film was eventually made, Douglas served as an executive producer. Werb and
Face-Off (1971 film) office income for a Canadian film, the Canadian Film Development Corporation did not expect to fully recoup its investment unless the film earned twice that amount. Upon the 2011 DVD release of "Face-Off", Sun Media's Bruce Kirkland acknowledged the "cheesy" production but noted the historic value of filmed scenes which included professional hockey players which he deemed of superior quality compared to the "crappy TV archives" of NHL footage of that time. "Face-Off" was restored from an extant 35 mm print and released in Blu-ray format by Video Services Corp on 15 November 2011. Only 10,000 discs were produced, due