Gravity Clip Illustrates The Dangers Of Working In Outer Space
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Next weekend Alfonso Cuarón makes his return to the big screen seven years after releasing the modern science fiction classic Children of Men. Gravity has been in the works ever since, and from this latest clip, it looks like time well spent. The clip features Sandra Bullock as Dr. Ryan Stone working on the space station as a nasty asteroid storm heads her way. Do yourself a favor, watch the clip above in full screen mode.
The action is so believable and intense that it really looks like Cuarón took Bullock and co-star George Clooney into space to shoot the movie. The way the camera floats in the scene is seamless, as if it were a virtual camera instead of a real one. If Cuarón can achieve realism in a one-minute YouTube video, I can’t imagine what it would be like to experience 90 minutes of the film on the big screen in IMAX 3D. This should be a good time.
Warner Bros has been ramping up promotion for Gravity in its final days before release, so be on the look out for more clips, featurettes, and trailers over the next week. We’ve already seen a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the 3D technology that highlights the stunning photography. There is also an in-depth interview with Cuarón that examines the Mexican director’s ups and down in making the space epic.
The Academy Award-winning Bullock actually talked to a working astronaut to gain some perspective while preparing for the difficult role. NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, while on board the International Space Station, talked with the 49-year-old actress about how to act in space. Coleman’s advice must have paid off, because the result is seamless.
Box office experts predict that Gravity will have a successful opening weekend and might gross upwards of $40 million domestically. This would be the highest opening for Alfonso Cuarón since Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which took in $93.6 million over its opening weekend in 2004. Warner Bros is lowering their expectations for the gross to around $30 million.
In the past, adult-centric dramas don’t have big opening weekends in the month of October. Warner Bros cites the openings of David Fincher’s The Social Network in 2010 and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed in 2006, which debuted with modest takes of $22.4 million and $26.9 million, respectively.
Gravity centers on Dr. Stone, a medical engineer and mission specialist on her first space shuttle mission, and Matt Kowalsky Clooney), a veteran astronaut on his last. After an accident tears apart the shuttle Explorer, the two become separated, and Stone is left to drift through outer space with no hope for rescue and with very little oxygen left in her tanks.
