User:Ssven2/TBOEM

Development

While traveling through the Southern United States in around 1998, Martin McDonagh came across a couple of accusatory billboards–which he described as "raging and painful and tragic [sic]"– about an unsolved crime.^[1] The billboards, which highlighted the incompetence of police work deeply affected McDonagh: "stayed in my mind [...] kept gnawing at me".^[1] He presumed that they were put up by the victim's mother.^[a] This incident, combined with his desire to create strong female characters inspired him to write the story for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.^[1] McDonagh discussed the creative process, saying that it took him about ten years to "[decide] that it was a mother who had taken these things out. It all became fiction [...] based on a couple of actual billboards".^[3][4]

McDonagh wrote the story for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in 2009; he said, in a later interview, that he always intended to make it into a feature film: "from day one, it was a screenplay [...] wasn’t plotted out".^[3] He centered the narrative around the three major characters, Mildred Hayes in particular. McDonagh said that the film's script developed very organically and "each scene evolved to see what [Mildred] would do next, or what [the other characters] would do to counteract it".^[3] He had initially planned to start filming for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in 2010, but opted in favour of working on the black comedy crime film Seven Psychopaths (2012) instead; he later acknowledged that the experience of working on the latter made him "comfortable about doing this one".^[5]

Casting

McDonagh had met Frances McDormand at a 2002 Broadway show of his play The Pillowman; it was during this meeting that McDormand showed interest in working with him. He wrote the screenplay keeping McDormand in mind for the role of Mildred Hayes as he felt that she was "an intelligent actor who wasn’t going to sentimentalise the part".^[6] McDormand was initially hesitant to play Mildred because of her age difference with the character and suggested that Mildred instead be the victim's grandmother; McDonagh disagreed as he thought that it would change the story too much.^[7][8] McDormand's husband, director and writer Joel Coen persuaded her to agree to the role regardless.^[7]