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.
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."
Thirty years after filming, Jean Simmons met the baby she held in this movie, who was working in the movie industry as a stuntwoman.
Despite this movie being a huge box-office success, gaining four Oscars and being considered to rank among the very best of historical epics, director Stanley Kubrick disowned the movie and did not include it as part of his canon. Although his personal mark is a distinct part of the final movie, his contract did not give him complete control over the filming, and he frequently clashed with the studio and star/producer Kirk Douglas, making this the only occasion on which he did not exercise such control over one of his movies.