During the course of the shoot, writer-director Taylor Sheridan was visited on set by some Shoshone tribal leaders who astonished him with the revelation that, at that very time, there were 12 unsolved murders of young women on a reservation of about 6,000 people. Due to a 1978 landmark government ruling (Oliphant v. Suquamish), the Supreme Court stripped tribes of the right to arrest and prosecute non-natives who commit crimes on native land. If neither victim nor perpetrator are native, a county or state officer must make the arrest. If the perpetrator is non-native and the victim an enrolled member, only a federally-certified agent has that right. If the opposite is true, a tribal officer can make the arrest, but the case must still go to federal court. This quagmire creates a jurisdictional nightmare by choking up the legal process on reservations to such a degree, many criminals go unpunished indefinitely for serious crimes.
Wind River Indian Reservation is the seventh-largest Indian reservation in the U.S.
The film received a lengthy 8 minutes standing ovation at the end of its premiere in the Un Certain Regard competition of the Cannes film festival.
Jeremy Renner was the director's first choice for the lead role but as he was busy shooting Premier contact (2016) at that time, Taylor Sheridan approached Chris Pine who later had to drop out because of his role in Wonder Woman (2017). Coincidentally, Renner's schedule opened up and was roped in for the role.
The grueling location shoot was filmed in real blizzardy conditions with crew and equipment being primarily ferried to locations on snowmobiles and snowcats, since regular vehicles were totally unsuitable for the hazardous terrain. Cleaning up unsightly vehicular tracks left in the snowy landscape had to be done with some compositing in post to keep the vista in 'virginal' condition.
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