Miracle

Miracle (2004)

Timing: 2:15 (135 min)

7.111/10
656

6.924/10
8214

7.5/10
64000

All about film

Video 2

Photo 33

Actors and characters

Release date

2004-02-06

Country

United States

Production

Walt Disney Pictures

Genre

Drama, History

Budget

$28 000 000

Revenue

$64 429 010

Website

Director

Gavin O'Connor

Actors

Kurt Russell, Patricia Clarkson, Noah Emmerich, Sean McCann, Kenneth Welsh, Eddie Cahill, Patrick O'Brien Demsey, Michael Mantenuto, Nathan West, Kenneth Mitchell
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Eric Guggenheim

Producer

Mark Ciardi, Gordon Gray

Operator

Dan Stoloff

Composer

Mark Isham

Artist

Audition

Editing

John Gilroy, Daric Loo
All team (14)

• Over 4,000 people tried out for the 20 roster spots on the American Olympic hockey team.
• Bill Ranford, a former goaltender for the Edmonton Oilers, was the backup goalie for the American team's Jim Craig.
• Herb Brooks, the American team's coach at the 1980 Olympic Games, was himself a participant in the Olympic hockey tournament in 1964 and 1968.
• The total length of the filmed footage amounted to over 450 kilometers – an absolute record for Disney projects at the time.
• Coach Herb Brooks died in a car accident on August 11, 2003, during the filming process. The film is dedicated to his memory, as mentioned before the end credits.
• Herb Brooks' wife, Patti Brooks, appears in a cameo as one of the spectators at the USSR vs. USA game. She sits to the left of the actor who played Jim Craig's father and appears in many shots of the game. She can also be seen in several scenes with Walter Bush, the director of the American Olympic Hockey Committee.
• Buzz Schneider, one of the players on the American hockey team, was played by his son, Billy Schneider.
• The referee in the key game was played by Ryan Walter, a former NHL hockey player and resident of Vancouver. He was also a technical consultant on the film and was responsible for staging all the hockey scenes. Special attention was paid to ensuring that all goals in the film looked exactly as they did in real matches.
• The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were recreated using computer graphics. This was the first time this had been done since their destruction in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
• Director Gavin O'Connor's cameo: a fan wrapping the national flag around Jim Craig's shoulders at the very end of the film.
• The scene in which coach Herb Brooks made the entire team skate back and forth across the ice after a humiliating 3-3 draw with Norway was filmed over three days, 12 hours a day. The director wanted to achieve maximum realism.
• Ken Dryden and Al Michaels, who commentated the 1980 matches on American television, reconstructed much of their reportage for the film's shooting twenty-three years later. At the same time, archival footage from ABC was used for the final seconds of the game between the USSR and the USA.
• Young people invited to play the American hockey players were primarily selected for their physical qualities and ability to play hockey. For most of them, this was their first work in film.
• Kurt Russell agreed to reduce his fee so that almost a thousand extras could receive a full hot meal instead of dry rations.