Stanley Kubrick was brought in as director after Kirk Douglas had a major falling out with the original director, Anthony Mann. According to Sir Peter Ustinov, the salt mines sequence was the only footage shot by Mann.
Although it has been suggested that the 42-year-old Kirk Douglas was too old to play Spartacus, it is believed the real man was about 38 when he died.
The original version included a scene where Marcus Licinius Crassus (Sir Laurence Olivier) attempts to seduce Antoninus (Tony Curtis). The Production Code Administration and the Legion of Decency both objected. At one point Geoffrey Shurlock, representing the censors, suggested it would help if the reference in the scene to a preference for oysters or snails was changed to truffles and artichokes. In the end the scene was cut, but it was put back in for the 1991 restoration. However, the soundtrack had been lost in the meantime and the dialogue had to be dubbed. Curtis was able to redo his lines, but Olivier had died. Dame Joan Plowright, his widow, remembered that Sir Anthony Hopkins had done a dead-on impression of Olivier and she mentioned this to the restoration team. They approached Hopkins and he agreed to voice Olivier's lines in that scene. Hopkins is thanked in the credits for the restored version.
Sir Peter Ustinov joked about his daughter, born at the beginning of production, being in kindergarten by the time this movie was finished. When asked what her father did for a living, she would answer, "Spartacus."
Cinematographer Russell Metty walked off the set, complaining that director Stanley Kubrick was not letting him do his job. Metty was used to directors allowing him to call his own shots with little oversight, while Kubrick was a professional photographer who had shot some of his previous movies by himself. Subsequently, Kubrick did the majority of the cinematography work. Metty complained about this up until the release of the movie and even, at one point, asked to have his name removed from the credits. However, because his name was in the credits, when this movie won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, it was given to Metty, although he actually didn't shoot most of it.