The Aeronauts
Short description
The Aeronauts is a British-American adventure drama set in 1862, in which a balloon pilot named Amelia Wren joins forces with the meteorologist James Glaisher. He wants to advance the understanding of weather and rise higher than anyone before; she brings the flying skill and the showmanship the venture demands. Their ascent takes them through storms and into air so thin that the journey turns into a struggle to stay alive, while the two mismatched travellers also reckon with what they have left behind on the ground.
Tom Harper directed the film from a screenplay by Jack Thorne, with David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman and Harper producing. It followed Wild Rose in Harper's filmography and sits between that 2019 release and Heart of Stone. Eddie Redmayne plays Glaisher and Felicity Jones plays Wren, heading a cast of twenty-four that also includes Tom Courtenay, Phoebe Fox, Himesh Patel and Rebecca Front.
The film was made for a budget of around 40 million US dollars and took roughly 3 million dollars worldwide at the box office. On IMDb it holds 6.6 out of 10 from about 40,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.8 from over 1,200 votes. A critics' rating of 6.5 from 193 reviews places it in similar territory to the audience scores, without a strong divergence between the two.
What's left behind the scenes
- During filming, Eddie Redmayne injured his leg and was in a cast and using crutches for some time.
- James Glaisher (1809-1903) was an English meteorologist and aeronaut. Between 1862 and 1866, he repeatedly ascended in hot air balloons, measuring temperature and humidity at various altitudes. Together with second pilot Henry Tracey Coxwell (1819-1900), on September 5, 1862, they set a new world record for altitude. Coxwell is not in the film; instead, there is a fictional character, Amelia Ren. The image of this heroine incorporates features of some real women of that era – for example, Sophie Blanchard (1778-1819), the first professional balloonist.
- In 1785, Jean-Pierre François Blanchard (1763-1809) demonstrated the use of a parachute when jumping from a hot air balloon basket. In his early parachute demonstrations, he used dogs, but he later recounted that he had used the parachute himself when the balloon's envelope suddenly tore during flight. Blanchard died from injuries sustained after falling from a hot air balloon basket when he suffered a heart attack. His wife, Sophie, continued his work. She died on July 6, 1819, when her hot air balloon caught fire in flight, and she crashed from a height onto the rooftops of Paris, and then onto the pavements below.
- Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne actually ascended in a hot air balloon to a height of 8,000 feet (approximately 2.4 km).
- The flight in the film is shown in real time.
- The hot air balloon actually took off from Wolverhampton, not London, as shown in the film. Concerns were taken into account that it might fall into the river if it took off from London.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
