Don Suddaby (himself) is the actual British biochemist that has synthesized the pure oil (erucic acid) that was used to treat Lorenzo. He was born in Kingston upon Hull, England, where he has a street named after him, "Suddaby Close", which runs adjacent to "Lorenzo Way".
Although a medical drama might seem an odd choice for the director of the "Mad Max" movies, George Miller is in fact a qualified doctor.
Producer and director George Miller also co-wrote the script. What with his medical background, it lends this movie a considerable accuracy when it comes to the progressive symptoms of ALD (adrenoleukodystrophy).
In a 2014 interview at the Florida Film Festival, Susan Sarandon said that this movie was originally conceived and shot with the intent that as Lorenzo got sicker and sicker, the movie would fade from color to black-and-white. However, the production ran out of the money needed to process the film in that way, and the movie ended up being in color from beginning to end. She also said that this was actually the second movie in her career for which this had happened--that originally, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) was supposed to be in black-and-white until the first appearance of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, when his red lips would have been the first item in color in the movie, but again, the production didn't have the money to process the film in that way, so the whole thing stayed in color. Of course, the most famous example of this type of b&W-to-color transition in a movie is 1939's The Wizard of Oz, in which the initial scenes set in Kansas are in black and white, and the movie only switches to color once Dorothy (Judy Garland) steps out of her house and into the Land of Oz.
Lorenzo was played by four actors and two actresses in this movie.