Trivia
How to Rob a Bank
Directed by David Leitch · starring Nicholas Hoult, Christian Slater and Zoë Kravitz
- 9 facts
- 2026
How to Rob a Bank: trivia
All 9 facts
- 1
Two films in one
David Leitch shot 'How to Rob a Bank' with two very different textures. The videos the crew posts on its channel were captured on small consumer cameras, what he calls a "Prosumer" aesthetic, while the characters’ real lives were filmed on 35mm. "The other half of this movie we shot on film, shot on 35, and it’s the grounded reality of their lives and what’s driving them to take such risks," the director explained.
- 2
The heists were staged like theatre
For the sequences the robbers film themselves, the team blocked each heist like a piece of theatre and then let the actors walk through it with cameras strapped on. "We would stage the heist as a play, and then the guys would wear their cameras, because that’s what content creators would do," David Leitch said. With Osmo gimbals, drones and a 360 camera, many of the shots were built in the edit, including one that circles the crew on their motorbikes.
- 3
The crew's episodes were not in the script
Mark Bianculli’s script did not include the videos the crew uploads to its channel. David Leitch and his team invented them during production so the audience inside the film would get hooked on them. "We created these fun episodes that were edutainment, pulling the heartstrings of the audience and drawing them in to build this fan base. I get to put on the hat of a content creator," he explained. To find the tone he spent his time feeding his own YouTube algorithm.
- 4
Showing the YouTube logo took negotiating
Putting the brand on screen was not automatic. "There were negotiations to have the logo on, and ‘how far will we go?’", David Leitch admitted, conceding that what his characters do "you probably couldn’t get away with on YouTube". They pushed anyway: "These guys, at the end of the day, they are radical in their approach, but that’s part of the entertainment."
- 5
Wolf masks and cash thrown at the audience
The 'How to Rob a Bank' presentation at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, in April 2026, opened with a group of motorcyclists wearing the wolf masks the robbers use in the film, doing acrobatics on stage and throwing cash into the audience. David Leitch and Pete Davidson came out next, and Davidson summed the film up, minus one unprintable word, as "totally insane".
- 6
Five takes lost to grooved concrete
Nicholas Hoult picks the highway chase as the hardest thing in the shoot. The team had rehearsed the move on smooth tarmac, but the bridge they ended up filming on was grooved concrete and the tyres would not grip. The driver missed it on the first five takes, with the whole crew watching in the heat, before finally landing it as Pete Davidson cheered from the sidelines.
- 7
First pitch at the Pirates ballpark
On 27 July 2025, with the Pittsburgh shoot in full swing, Nicholas Hoult and Anna Sawai threw the ceremonial first pitch at PNC Park before the Pittsburgh Pirates played the Arizona Diamondbacks, with David Leitch watching from the stands. Pete Davidson used those months in town to play a sold out run of stand-up shows at a local venue.
- 8
Three different films, one title
The title is not exclusive. A heist comedy called 'How to Rob a Bank' came out in 2007 with Nick Stahl and Erika Christensen, and in 2024 Netflix released a documentary of the same name about Scott Scurlock, the robber nicknamed the Hollywood Bandit, who wore prosthetic disguises to hold up banks in Seattle through the nineties. 'How to Rob a Bank' is the third on that list.
- 9
Robin Hood for the digital age
David Leitch describes 'How to Rob a Bank' as his most punk rock film. "This is not your typical heist movie. This is a movie that turns that genre on its head," he says, calling it "a little bit of a Robin Hood for the digital age" with something to say about who holds the money and who does not. The finished cut went through two test screenings and, the director says, both came back "overwhelmingly positive".