Charlie Hunnam shed 40 pounds while filming the sequences depicting Papillon's solitary confinement.
The movie was shot in different locations around Europe including Montenegro, Malta, and Belgrade, Serbia.
When the guards are yelling off names as the prisoners are getting off the boat, one of them yells Hoffman, an obvious reference to Dustin Hoffman, who played Louis Dega in the original 1973 version.
According to Yorick van Wageningen, shooting the prison scenes in Montenegro was constantly disrupted by bad weather, which turned the entire set into a giant mud bath. He was originally supposed to work on the project for only a few weeks, but the delays forced him to stay on for two months.
Papillon means "Butterfly" and was Henri Charrière's nickname due to the butterfly tattoo on his chest.