King Kong Lives
Short description
Ten years after plunging from the World Trade Center, King Kong survives in a coma, kept alive by Dr. Amy Franklin at a research institute in Atlanta. When his heart begins to fail, she plans an artificial heart transplant, but the operation requires a compatible blood supply, and Kong appears to be the only creature of his kind. The explorer Hank Mitchell locates a giant female ape in the jungles of Borneo and brings her to the United States. After the surgery succeeds, Kong becomes aware of the female's presence, and the two escape together into the surrounding countryside, pursued by the authorities.
John Guillermin directed the film, his ninth in the chronological list of his work, arriving a decade after his 1976 King Kong and following Sheena. Ronald Shusett and Steven Pressfield wrote the screenplay, Martha De Laurentiis produced, and the cast includes Linda Hamilton as Amy Franklin, Brian Kerwin as Hank Mitchell, Peter Elliott as King Kong and George Antoni as Lady Kong, with John Ashton and Peter Michael Goetz in supporting roles.
The film was released in December 1986, runs 105 minutes and had a budget of 10 million dollars. Its worldwide box office came to about 5 million dollars, roughly half its production cost. On IMDb it holds 4 out of 10 from around 7,400 votes, and on TMDB 5.2 out of 10 from 273 votes. A film critics' rating of 2.6 out of 10 from 13 reviews places it below even the modest audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film ranks 15th in attendance among foreign films in Soviet cinema distribution.
- In Japan, the film was shown as "King Kong 2".
- Peter Michael Getz received a check for 3 cents after the film's run. He stapled the check to the film's poster in his house and never cashed it.
- Linda Hamilton agreed to star in the film after seeing how filming in the first film ('King Kong', 1976, John Guillermin) made Jessica Lange a major star. During filming, she had no idea what the final result would be like, and when she saw the film, she was horrified – and rightly so, because both critics and audiences considered it terrible.
- During the filming of this movie, director John Gillerermin was in mourning for his son, Michael, who had died on the set of his previous adventure film, "Sheena – Queen of the Jungle" (1984). It often happened that right in the middle of the workday he would halt filming and go sailing. Once, after another scandal (and he was a notorious troublemaker), he disappeared for several days. The filming was completed for him by documentarian Charles McCrecken, who was only 21 years old at the time.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
