Panic Room
Short description
Recently divorced Meg Altman and her young daughter Sarah move into a large New York townhouse that once belonged to a wealthy man. The house comes with a panic room, a fortified inner chamber with its own phone line, ventilation and monitors, designed so that anyone inside can seal it and wait out a threat. On their first night there, three intruders break in. Meg and Sarah retreat into the panic room, but the men are not simply after whatever they can grab elsewhere in the house: what they want is inside the room itself. What follows is a standoff in which the sealed space is both the mother and daughter's protection and the reason they cannot simply be left alone.
David Fincher directed the film, working from a screenplay by David Koepp, who produced with Ceán Chaffin and Gavin Polone. It was Fincher's fifth feature, following Fight Club and preceding Zodiac. Jodie Foster plays Meg, with Kristen Stewart as Sarah, Forest Whitaker as Burnham, Dwight Yoakam as Raoul and Jared Leto as Junior.
The film had a budget of 48 million dollars and took about 197 million dollars worldwide, a strong return. On IMDb it holds 6.8 out of 10 from roughly 314,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.8 from around 5,581 votes. A critics' rating of 7.2 from 191 reviews is slightly higher than those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Deyvi Chase auditioned for the role of Sarah.
- Jodie Foster was pregnant during filming. As the filming was delayed, they had to wait for Foster to give birth and be able to return to work.
- The role of Raul was offered to Maynard James Keenan.
- The opening credits were created by The Picture Mill and ComputerCafe. It took them about a year to complete.
- Adam Goldberg was originally supposed to play Junior.
- Darius Khondji left the project after two weeks of filming.
- The idea for the film came to David Koepp after he read an article about safe rooms in The New York Times and got stuck in his building's elevator.
- According to David Fincher, Kristen Stewart grew more than 3 inches during filming. She was shorter than Jodie Foster at the beginning of filming and taller than her at the end.
- All scenes inside the house were filmed in chronological order.
- Meg's (Jodie Foster) cell phone is a Nokia 8890.
- David Koepp wrote the first draft of the script in six days.
- At the 15-minute mark, Meg throws her glasses onto the nightstand after reading the alarm instructions. The temples of the glasses are folded together. At the 19-minute mark, the glasses on the nightstand are in a different position with the temples spread apart.
- In the scene where the intruders try to release gas into the room, it accumulates near the ceiling. Main gas methane would indeed rise. However, the film uses bottled gas, i.e., propane or butane, which are heavier than air and would realistically sink to the floor.
- Originally, Nicole Kidman was supposed to play Meg, and Hayden Panettiere was to play Sarah. Shortly before filming began, Hayden was replaced by Kristen Stewart. Eighteen days into filming, Kidman dropped out of the project due to complications from a knee injury sustained while filming "Moulin Rouge" (2001). David Fincher suggested the studio shut down the project, but the studio executives decided otherwise. The lead role was offered to Jodie Foster, who was scheduled to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival at the time. Jodie declined the trip to Cannes to work with Fincher, with whom she was supposed to star in "The Game" (1997), but her role was then rewritten and went to Sean Penn. Foster had only nine days to prepare for the role.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
