Pat Boone didn't want to make this film but was talked into it by his agent. Years later he stated he's glad he did it because of the regular residual checks it brings in and because it's the movie he'll probably be best remembered for.
James Mason replaced an ailing Clifton Webb in the part of Professor Lindenbrook before filming began. Alexander Scourby started shooting at Carlsbad Caverns in the Count Saknussem role, but the producers were unhappy with him and he was replaced with Thayer David.
James Mason reportedly had very little patience with the "movie star" preening of Arlene Dahl and the relationship between the two off set was very much like what you see on screen.
Count Saknussem says: "I don't sleep. How I hate those little slices of death." This is a variation of an Edgar Allan Poe quote: "Sleep, those little slices of death; Oh how I loathe them".
Fox gave the green light to this big-budget CinemaScope production partially on the basis of the success of the recent Jules Verne adaptations, Walt Disney's 20000 Leagues Under the Sea and Michael Todd's Around the World in Eighty Days. As with those earlier films, the heavy cost proved to be a good investment, resulting in a big hit at the box office.
Many of the people in the crowd scenes were students of Edinburgh University.
The professor's name in the original novel (French language) was Otto Lidenbrock, a German. In the movie it was changed to Oliver Lindenbrook, a Scotsman. The name of his assistant Axel was Caledonized into Alec. (This was done because of historical hindsight, as 19th-century Scots had become known as the best field geologists, with Germans preferring lab-bound geology.) A more drastic change had already been made with the first (anonymous) English translation of the novel when the Professor's surname became Hartwig and Axel became an English student named Henry Lawson.