The Circle
Short description
Mae Holland, a young woman starting out in her career, is hired by the Circle, the most influential technology and social media company in the world. The firm has built a single universal online identity that ties together its users' email, social profiles, banking and purchases, presented as a step toward a safer, crime-free society. Mae rises quickly through the company's ranks, and its founder, Eamon Bailey, draws her into an experiment that pushes at the boundaries of privacy and individual freedom. Her choices begin to affect the people close to her and, eventually, everyone else. The film is based on Dave Eggers's novel of the same name, and Eggers wrote the screenplay with director James Ponsoldt.
The Circle was released in 2017 and runs 110 minutes. It is Ponsoldt's fourth feature, following Smashed, The Spectacular Now and The End of the Tour, and it came before Summering. Emma Watson plays Mae, with Tom Hanks as Eamon Bailey, John Boyega as Ty Lafitte, Karen Gillan as Annie Allerton, Ellar Coltrane as Mercer Regalado and Patton Oswalt as Tom Stenton. Hanks also produced alongside Anthony Bregman and Walter F. Parkes, and the production involved companies from the United States, France and the United Arab Emirates.
Made for a modest 18 million dollars, the film took in about 41 million worldwide. Audiences were lukewarm: it holds 5.4 out of 10 on IMDb from roughly 105,000 votes and 5.5 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller pool of about 4,700. A critics' rating of 4.2 out of 10 from 147 reviews places it below those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is based on the novel of the same name by Dave Eggers.
- This is the final role of actor, director, screenwriter and producer Bill Paxton (1955-2017).
- Reshoots began 4 months before the film's release. It was planned to make Emma Watson's character more attractive, and they did, but the public's reaction at previews became even colder than before.
- The scene of the video call between Annie (played by Karen Gillan) and May (played by Emma Watson) was filmed by Gillan's crew in Scotland, where Gillan was directing her own screenplay, "Party Has Just Begun" (2018).
- The film's ending differs from the finale of the novel of the same name (2015) by Dave Eggers, which served as the literary basis for the screenplay. In the novel, May fully trusts the corporation and its stated goals and principles, and therefore betrays Tai (played by John Boyega), who hopes to expose the corporation.
- The lead role was initially offered to Alicia Vikander, who found herself in a difficult position. She had almost simultaneously received offers to star in "The Circle," Justin Kurzel's science fiction action film "Assassin's Creed" (2016), and Paul Greengrass's spy thriller "Jason Bourne" (2016). The actress chose the latter, and producers were forced to offer the leading role in "The Circle" to the second most suitable candidate, Emma Watson.
- The logos of "The Circle" on various devices begin to glow when the devices are in operation.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
