Milla Jovovich has disowned the film, as she was disappointed on how it was handled by Sony, when the studio executives forced Kurt Wimmer to remove over 30 minutes of footage from the original cut. Kurt Wimmer has also disowned the final cut of the film, for not representing his original vision.
While on the set, Kurt Wimmer asked Milla Jovovich to punch him, in order to get a feel for the intensity she was putting in her action sequences. For the next several days, Wimmer directed the film with a black eye.
The film's extensive visual effects are visibly unfinished in the final cut of the film. They were never completed as intended due to Executive Meddling. Sony had locked Kurt Wimmer and Milla Jovovich out of the editing room and hastily cobbled together an 88 minute PG-13 film out of Wimmer's R-rated workprint. Several scenes, including the infamous motorcycle chase scene, use incomplete temp-renders that were never meant to be seen outside of the editing room. The unfinished effects were a result of Sony trying to rush the film to release it on time on the planned date.
Against the wishes of director Kurt Wimmer, the film was completely re-edited by the studio after they saw the original version which they apparently did not like; they saw it as 'too emotional' for the action film they were expecting and re-edited it so there would be more of an emphasis on the action and to cut it down from an R rating to a PG-13 rating. The edition shortened the film from its original length of 120 minutes to 88 minutes. The director was quite angry about the edition, and many fans agree that it lowered the quality of the film significantly. An extended version of the film was later released with 6 additional minutes increasing the runtime to 94 minutes.
Though the film largely underperformed in the United States, it performed well in Japan and was popular enough there that an anime series based on the film was released, titled Ultraviolet: Code 044 (2008).
Kurt Wimmer: as the "speak-no-evil" phage (out of the three) shot by Daxus during the "coffee shot" scene. Wimmer also "died" as a cameo in Equilibrium (2002), a previous movie.
Kurt Wimmer: [muzzle flash symbol] the muzzle flash on Violet's Uzi-like submachine resembles the biohazard symbol, similar to the way in Wimmer's previous movie Equilibrium (2002), that John Preston's guns have muzzle flashes that resemble the Tetragrammaton symbol.