Deep Impact (film)

Deep Impact is a 1998 American science

fiction disaster film[3] directed by Mimi
Leder, written by Bruce Joel Rubin and
Michael Tolkin, and starring Robert
Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa
Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, and Morgan
Freeman. Steven Spielberg served as an
executive producer of this film. It was
released by Paramount Pictures in North
America and by DreamWorks Pictures
internationally on May 8, 1998. The film
depicts the attempts to prepare for and
destroy a 7-mile (11 km) wide comet set to
collide with Earth and cause a mass
extinction.

Deep Impact was released in the same

summer as the similarly themed
Armageddon, which fared better at the
box office, while astronomers described
Deep Impact as being more accurate.[4][5]
Both films were similarly received by
critics, with Armageddon scoring 43% and
Deep Impact scoring 45% on Rotten
Tomatoes. Deep Impact grossed over
$349.5 million worldwide on an $80
million production
Deep Impact
budget, becoming
the sixth highest-
grossing film of
1998.

It was the final film

by cinematographer
Theatrical release
Dietrich Lohmann,
poster
who died before the
Directed by Mimi
film's release.[6]
Leder
Plot Written by Bruce
Joel
In May 1998, at a Rubin
star party in Michael
Virginia, teenage Tolkin
amateur astronomer Produced by David
Leo Biederman Brown
observes an Richard

unidentified object D.
Zanuck
in the night sky. He
sends a picture to Starring Robert
Duvall
astronomer Dr.
Téa Leoni
Marcus Wolf, who
Elijah
realizes it is a comet
Wood
on collision course
Vanessa
with Earth. Wolf Redgrave
dies in a car crash Maximilian
while racing to Schell
raise the alarm. Morgan
Freeman
A year later, Cinematography Die
MSNBC journalist Loh
Jenny Lerner Edited by Paul
investigates Cichocki
Secretary of the David

Treasury Alan Rosenbloo

Rittenhouse over Music by James

his connection with Horner

"Ellie", whom she Production Paramou

companies
assumes to be a Pictures

mistress; she is DreamW

Pictures
confused when she
Amblin
finds him and his
Enterta
family loading a
The
boat with large
Manhatt
amounts of food and
other survival gear. Project
She is apprehended Zanuck/

by the FBI and taken Product

to meet President Distributed by Para

Tom Beck, who Pictu

(Nort
persuades her not to
Ameri
share the story in
Drea
return for a
Pictu
prominent role in (thro
the press Unite
conference he will Inter
arrange. She Pictu
subsequently (Inter

discovers that Release May 8, 1998

date
"Ellie" is actually
an acronym — E.L.E.
— which stands for Running 121
time
"extinction-level minutes
event". Two days Country United
later, Beck States
announces that the Language English
comet Wolf–
Budget $80
Biederman is on million[1]
course to impact the
Box office $349.5
Earth in roughly million[2]
one year and could
cause humanity's extinction. He reveals
that the United States and Russia have
been constructing the Messiah in orbit, a
spacecraft to transport a team to alter
the comet's path with nuclear bombs.
The Messiah launches a short time later
with a crew of five American astronauts
and one Russian cosmonaut. They land on
the comet's outer-most layer and drill the
nuclear bombs deep beneath its surface,
but the comet shifts into the sunlight.
Consequently, one astronaut is blinded
and another propelled into space by an
explosive release of gas. The remaining
crew escape the comet and detonate the
bombs. However, rather than deflect the
comet, the bombs split it in two. Beck
announces the mission's failure in a
television address, and that both pieces —
the larger now named Wolf and the
smaller named Biederman — are still
headed for Earth. Wolf is on a collision
course with western Canada, and its
impact is expected to fill the atmosphere
with dust, blocking all sunlight for two
years and creating an impact winter that
will kill all life on the planet's surface.

Martial law is imposed and a lottery

selects 800,000 Americans to join 200,000
pre-selected individuals in underground
shelters in Missouri's limestone bluffs.
Lerner is pre-selected, as are the
Biederman family as gratitude for
discovering the comet, though Leo's
girlfriend Sarah and her family are not
selected. Lerner's mother, upon learning
most senior citizens are ineligible for the
lottery, commits ritual suicide. Leo
marries Sarah in a vain attempt to save her
family; while this saves Sarah, her family
are still not selected, and she refuses to
go without them. A last-ditch effort to
deflect the comets with ICBMs fails. Upon
arrival at the shelter, Leo eschews his
safety and leaves to find Sarah. He
reaches her on the freeway and takes her
and her baby brother to higher ground
while her parents remain. Lerner gives up
her seat on an evacuation helicopter to a
colleague and her young daughter, instead
traveling to a beach where she reconciles
with her estranged father.
The Biederman fragment hits the Atlantic
Ocean near Cape Hatteras, North
Carolina, creating a megatsunami that
destroys much of the East Coast of the
United States, reaching the Ohio River
Valley, and also hitting Europe and
Africa. Millions are killed, including
Sarah’s parents, Lerner, and her father.
Leo, Sarah, and her baby brother survive
after making it to the foothills of the
Appalachian Mountains. The crew of
Messiah, now dangerously low on both
life-support and remaining propellant
fuel, decide to sacrifice themselves to
destroy the larger Wolf fragment by
flying deep inside it and detonating their
remaining nuclear bombs. They say goodbye
to their loved ones by video call and
execute their plan. Wolf is blown into
smaller pieces which burn up harmlessly in
the Earth's atmosphere, averting further
catastrophe.

After the waters recede, President Beck

speaks to a large crowd at an under-
construction replacement United States
Capitol, encouraging them to remember
those lost as they begin to rebuild.

Cast

Robert Duvall as Captain Spurgeon

"Fish" Tanner, a widowed veteran
astronaut who becomes the rendezvous
pilot of the Messiah
Téa Leoni as Jenny Lerner, an MSNBC
journalist
Elijah Wood as Leo Biederman, a
teenage astronomer who discovers the
Wolf–Biederman comet
Vanessa Redgrave as Robin Lerner,
Jenny's mother
Morgan Freeman as Tom Beck, the
President of the United States
Maximilian Schell as Jason Lerner,
Jenny's estranged father
James Cromwell as Alan Rittenhouse,
the Secretary of the Treasury who
resigns in light of the Wolf–Biederman
comet threat
Ron Eldard as Commander Oren Monash,
the Mission Commander of the Messiah
Jon Favreau as Dr. Gus Partenza, the
medical officer of the Messiah
Laura Innes as Beth Stanley, MSNBC's
White House correspondent, and one of
Jenny's co-workers
Mary McCormack as Andrea "Andy"
Baker, the pilot of the Messiah
Richard Schiff as Don Biederman, Leo's
father
Leelee Sobieski as Sarah Hotchner,
Leo's girlfriend
Blair Underwood as Mark Simon, the
navigator of the Messiah
Dougray Scott as Eric Vennekor, one of
Jenny's co-workers
Bruce Weitz as Stuart Caley, Jenny's
boss at MSNBC
Betsy Brantley as Ellen Biederman,
Leo's mother
O'Neal Compton as Morten Entriken,
advisor to the President
Rya Kihlstedt as Chloe Lerner, Jason's
2nd wife
Aleksandr Baluev as Colonel Mikhail
"Mick" Tulchinsky, a Russian cosmonaut
and nuclear specialist of the Messiah
Mark Moses as Tim Urbanski, an MSNBC
anchor, and one of Jenny's co-workers
Charles Martin Smith as astronomer
Marcus Wolf
Denise Crosby as Vicky Hotchner,
Sarah's mother
Gary Werntz as Chuck Hotchner,
Sarah's father
Kimberly Huie as Wendy Mogel, Mark
Simon's fiancée
Francis X. McCarthy as General Scott
 Mike O'Malley as Mike Perry, Leo's
teacher
Kurtwood Smith as Otis "Mitch"
Hefter, the mission flight director

Production

The origins of Deep Impact started in the

late 1970s when producers Richard Zanuck
and David Brown approached Paramount
Pictures proposing a remake of the 1951
film When Worlds Collide.[7] Although
several screenplay drafts were completed,
the producers were not completely happy
with any of them and the project remained
in "development hell" for many years. In
the mid-1990s, they approached director
Steven Spielberg, with whom they had
made the 1975 blockbuster Jaws, to discuss
their long-planned project.[7] However,
Spielberg had already bought the film
rights to the 1993 novel The Hammer of
God by Arthur C. Clarke, which dealt
with a similar theme of an asteroid on a
collision course for Earth and humanity's
attempts to prevent its own extinction.
Spielberg planned to produce and direct
The Hammer of God himself for his then-
fledgling DreamWorks studio, but opted
to merge the two projects with Zanuck
and Brown, and they commissioned a
screenplay for what would become Deep
Impact.[7]

In 1995, the forthcoming film was

announced in industry publications as
"Screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin, based on
the film When Worlds Collide and The
Hammer of God by Arthur C Clarke"[8]
though ultimately, following a
subsequent redraft by Michael Tolkin,
neither source work would be credited in
the final film. Spielberg still planned to
direct Deep Impact himself, but
commitments to his 1997 film Amistad
prevented him from doing so in time,
particularly as Touchstone Pictures had
just announced their own similarly-
themed film Armageddon, also to be
released in summer 1998.[7] Not wanting to
wait, the producers opted to hire Mimi
Leder to direct Deep Impact, with
Spielberg acting as executive producer.[7]
Leder was unaware of the other film being
made. “I couldn’t believe it. And the press
was trying to pit us against each other.
That didn’t feel good. Both films have
great value and, fortunately, they both
succeeded tremendously." Clarke's novel
was used as part of the film's publicity
campaign both before and after the film's
release[9][10][11][12] and he was disgruntled
about not being credited on the film.[13][14]
Jenny Lerner, the character played by Téa
Leoni, was originally intended to work for
CNN. CNN rejected this because it would
be "inappropriate". MSNBC agreed to be
featured in the movie instead, seeing it as a
way to gain exposure for the then newly
created network.[15]

Director Mimi Leder later explained that

she would have liked to travel to other
countries to incorporate additional
perspectives, but due to a strict filming
schedule and a comparatively low budget,
the idea was scratched.[16] Visual effects
supervisor Scott Farrar felt that
coverage of worldwide events would have
distracted and detracted from the main
characters' stories.[16]

A number of scientists worked as science

consultants for the film including
astronomers Gene Shoemaker, Carolyn
Shoemaker, Josh Colwell and Chris
Luchini, former astronaut David Walker,
and the former director of the NASA's
Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center Gerry
Griffin.[17]

Soundtrack

The music for the film was composed and

conducted by James Horner.
Release Deep Impact –
Music from the
Theatrical Motion Picture

The film was Soundtrack album

by James Horner
released by
Paramount Pictures Released May 5,
1998
on May 8, 1998.
Recorded 1997–
1998
Home media
Genre Film
Deep Impact was score

released on VHS on Length 77:12

October 20, 1998, Label Sony
LaserDisc on Classical
November 3 and James Horner
DVD on December chronology
15.[18]
Titanic Deep The
Reception (1997) Impact Mask
– of
Music Zorro
Box office from (1998)
the
Deep Impact debuted Motion
at the North Picture
(1998)
American box office
with $41 million in
ticket sales. It managed to cross over
Twister, scoring the tenth-highest
opening weekend of all time.[19] For a
decade, the film held the record for
having the biggest opening weekend for a
female-directed film until it was taken by
Twilight in 2008.[20] The film grossed $140
million in North America and an additional
$209 million worldwide for a total gross
of $349 million. Despite competition in the
summer of 1998 from the similar
Armageddon, both films were widely
successful, with Deep Impact being the
higher opener of the two, while
Armageddon was the most profitable
overall.[2]
Critical reception

Deep Impact had a mixed critical reception.

Based on 94 reviews collected by Rotten
Tomatoes, 45% of critics enjoyed the film,
with an average rating of 5.8/10. The
website's critical consensus reads, "A
tidal wave of melodrama sinks Deep
Impact 's chance at being the memorable
disaster flick it aspires to be."[21]
Metacritic gave a score of 40 out of 100
based on 20 reviews, indicating "mixed or
average reviews".[22] Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average
grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[23]
Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times said
that the film "has a more brooding,
thoughtful tone than this genre usually
calls for",[24] while Rita Kempley and
Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington
Post criticized what they saw as
unemotional performances and a lack of
tension.[25][26]

Accolades

At the 1998 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards,

the film was nominated for Worst
Supporting Actress for Leoni (lost to
Lacey Chabert for Lost in Space) and
Worst Screenplay For A Film Grossing
More Than $100 Million (Using
Hollywood Math) (lost to Godzilla).[27]

See also

Film portal
Space portal
Greenland (film)

References

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com/movies/1998/DPIMP.php) . The
Numbers. Nash Information Services.
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20
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2. "Deep Impact" (https://www.boxofficemoj
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Mojo. Archived (https://web.archive.org/
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6. Oliver, Myrna (November 20, 1997).
"Dietrich Lohmann; Widely Praised
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Collide Anew (On Location for Deep
Impact...)" (https://archive.org/stream/st
arlog_magazine-250/250#page/n73/mode/
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ooks?id=WwLsAAAAMAAJ) . The Film
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Hollywood.com. Archived from the
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13. Coker, John L. III (September 1999). "A
Visit with Arthur C.Clarke" (http://ww
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14. United States House Science
Subcommittee on Space (1998). The threat
and the opportunity of asteroids and
other near-earth objects (https://books.g
oogle.com/books?id=gXAXqLGWxxcC)
(Report). Vol. 4. United States
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(https://web.archive.org/web/2021071202
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15. "MSNBC gets role in Deep Impact after
CNN declines" (http://www.highbeam.co
m/doc/1P1-19861267.html) . HighBeam
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April 30, 1998. Retrieved June 25, 2018.
16. Leder, Mimi and Farrar, Scott. Audio
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17. Kirby, David A. (2011). Lab Coats in
Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and
Cinema (https://books.google.com/books?i
d=MhWWrfWmGAwC) . MIT Press.
ISBN 9780262014786. Archived (https://w
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18. " 'Mercury Rising' and 'Deep Rising' due on
video" (https://www.newspapers.com/clip/
122520125/mercury-rising-and-deep-risin
g-due/) . The Kansas City Star. September
11, 1998. p. 106. Archived (https://web.arch
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19. " 'Deep Impact' Shoots to Top on Its First
Weekend" (https://www.latimes.com/arch
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20. Larry Carroll (2008-11-24). " 'Twilight'
Tuesday Finale: Director Catherine
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'Unbelievable!' " (http://www.mtv.com/ne
ws/articles/1600145/20081124/story.jhtm
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21. "Deep Impact (1998)" (https://www.rotten
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=asc) . Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media.
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20
170406201102/https://www.rottentomatoe
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22. "Deep Impact Reviews" (https://www.meta
critic.com/movie/deep-impact) .
Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived (ht
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23. "Home" (https://www.cinemascore.com/) .
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24. Maslin, Janet (May 8, 1998). "Movie
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Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20
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25. Kempley, Rita (March 8, 2000). " 'Deep
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26. O'Sullivan, Michael (March 8, 2000).
"High Profile, Low 'Impact' " (https://ww
w.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/long
term/movies/videos/deepimpactosullivan.h
tm) . The Washington Post. Archived (htt
ps://web.archive.org/web/20121109133441/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/
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27. "The Worst of 1998 Winners" (https://we
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thestinkers.com/winners98.html) .
Archived from the original (http://thestin
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External links

Deep Impact (https://w Wikiquote

has
ww.imdb.com/title/tt01
quotations
20647/) at IMDb related to
Deep
Deep Impact (https://w Impact.
ww.tcm.com/tcmdb/titl
e/333450/enwp) at the TCM Movie
Database
Deep Impact (https://www.boxofficemoj
o.com/movies/?id=deepimpact.htm) at
Box Office Mojo
Deep Impact (https://www.allmovie.com/
movie/v162450) at AllMovie
 Deep Impact (https://www.rottentomato
es.com/m/deep_impact) at Rotten
Tomatoes

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