Deep Impact is a 1998 science fiction disaster film released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks SKG in the United States on May 8, 1998. The film was directed by Mimi Leder, and stars Elijah Wood, Téa Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Leelee Sobieski, Vanessa Redgrave and Robert Duvall. The plot describes the attempts to prepare for and destroy a fictional comet (named "Wolf-Biederman"), which is expected to collide with the Earth and cause an Extinction Level Event.
A competing "space impact" film, Armageddon, was released about two months after Deep Impact in the United States.[1] Deep Impact was lauded by astronomers as being more scientifically accurate,[2] but Armageddon fared better at the box office.[3]
Plot
A teenaged astronomy-club member, Leo Biederman (Wood), alerts astronomer Dr. Marcus Wolf (Charles Martin Smith) to his sighting of an unusual comet. Wolf realizes the comet will hit Earth and attempts to alert his colleagues, but dies in a car accident after leaving the observatory. Twelve months later, a reporter for MSNBC in Washington, DC, Jenny Lerner (Leoni), is researching the resignation of the United States Secretary of the Treasury and is told by a former aide of his constant phone conversations about "Ellie". Lerner misconstrues this as a mistress and politically-charged affair, when in reality, "Ellie" is "E.L.E.": an acronym for extinction-level event.
As a consequence of Lerner's investigation, the government decides to make the knowledge public. U.S. President Tom Beck (Freeman) announces the grim facts: the comet, named "Wolf-Biederman," is seven miles wide, large enough to destroy civilization if it strikes Earth. The USA and Russia will dispatch a crew of astronauts on the spaceship Messiah to destroy the comet, using nuclear weapons. In order to prevent opportunism, Beck freezes all wages and prices. Life changes drastically worldwide, and Biederman and Lerner both become celebrities.
Messiah is constructed in orbit, and the crew use the Space Shuttle Atlantis to reach it. When the astronauts travel to the comet and drill the bombs into the surface they lose one crew member in the process and another is seriously burned by sunlight. When the bombs are detonated, the vessel is slightly damaged and the crew's contact with Earth is cut off. The comet is not destroyed; instead, it splits into two chunks one much smaller than the other. President Beck acknowledges Messiah’s failure and announces that special underground shelters have been built in limestone caves of Missouri.
The government will conduct a lottery to select 800,000 ordinary Americans to join 200,000 pre-selected scientists, engineers, teachers, artists, soldiers and officials. These people will be part of a worldwide effort to save mankind from extinction. Beck declares martial law as the lottery's selectees are notified. Jenny and Leo are both among the pre-selected. Leo gets permission to marry Sarah, to save her and her family, but on evacuation day, the soldiers have no record of the agreement to save Sarah's parents and sister. Sarah refuses to leave without them. Leo later manages to locate Sarah and her family on a gridlocked freeway. He takes Sarah and her infant sister to higher ground in the Appalachian Mountains. Meanwhile, as MSNBC is being evacuated by helicopter, Jenny gives her seat to a co-worker with a young daughter and goes to be with her estranged father.
A last-ditch effort to use all of Earth's missile-borne nuclear weapons to destroy the comets fails. The smaller of the two ("Biederman") hits the Atlantic Ocean near Virginia Beach and Cape Hatteras, creating a megatsunami about one thousand five hundred feet high. Jenny and her father die, along with Sarah's parents and millions of others on America's east coast.
The world then braces for the impact of the larger comet, "Wolf," which is predicted to strike western Canada and create a cloud of dust that will block out the sun for two years, killing all remaining plant, animal, and human life aside from that evacuated to the caves.
The crew members of Messiah decide to try to destroy the comet by flying into a fissure that has formed on its surface and exploding the remaining bombs on board. They will all die in the process, and have only enough time to say goodbye to their families. Messiah does succeed in breaking up "Wolf" into small pieces that burn up entering Earth's atmosphere, saving humanity. Afterward, President Beck gives an inspirational speech in front of a reconstructed United States Capitol building, in which he urges the nation to begin its recovery and efforts to rebuild.
Cast
Production
As it was a Paramount/DreamWorks co-production, it would be decided that one studio handle domestic rights and the other international rights. Paramount would distribute in the USA, and DreamWorks overseas. International video distribution rights were originally with Universal Studios.
In 2005, Paramount's parent company, Viacom, announced its acquisition of DreamWorks, and completed it in early 2006. Around that time, Viacom split into two companies, the other being called CBS Corporation. CBS inherited Paramount's TV operations, now called CBS Paramount Television.
Today, worldwide video and theatrical rights to Deep Impact are with Paramount, while television rights are in the hands of CBS Television Distribution.
CNN was originally going to be the Cable News Network in which Jenny Lerner's (Tea Leoni) plot revolves around. CNN rejected this because it would be "inappropriate". MSNBC which was a new network at the time features in the movie[4].
Reception
Deep Impact debuted at the North American box office with $41,152,275 in ticket sales. The movie grossed $140,464,664 in North America and an additional $209,000,000 worldwide for a total gross of $349,464,664. Some believed that Deep Impact could under-perform due to the release of a similar film in the summer of 1998—Armageddon—which had more hype, but Deep Impact still made a sizable amount and was the higher opener of the two.[5]
References
- ^ "Release in 1998 USA". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 2008-03-23.
- ^ Plait, Phil (2000-02-17). "Hollywood Does the Universe Wrong". Space.com.
- ^ "Disaster Movies". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on 2008-03-23.
- ^ AP: MSNBC gets role in ``Deep Impact after CNN declines 30/4/98: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-19861267
- ^ "Deep Impact (1998)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on 2008-02-22.
External links
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