Wolfgang Petersen. THR.
In America, Petersen was all about action. He made eight films in the U.S. and enjoyed a string of five straight box office hits: the political thriller In the Line of Fire (1993), starring Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service agent; Outbreak; Air Force One (1997), starring Harrison Ford as the U.S. president; The Perfect Storm (2000), with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg as ill-fated seamen; and the epic Troy (2004), starring Brad Pitt as Achilles.
Was “Troy” really a “hit”? Wikipedia says:
Troy grossed $133.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $364 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $497.4 million, making the film one of the highest grossing films of 2004, alongside The Passion of the Christ, Spider-Man 2 and Shrek 2.
But it cost $185 million to make. If you use the rule of thumb of three times budget to make a profit, “Troy” falls short. Using the 2.5X rule, it may have made a relatively small profit. And do you hear anybody talking about “Troy” these days?
I don’t have a dog in this fight: I haven’t seen “Troy”, but would not mind seeing it. The only Peterson film I have seen is “Das Boot”, but I’d actually like to see almost all of his others…
…except “Poseidon”, which I think everyone agrees was a bad idea that pretty much killed his career. (He has one credit in IMDB as a director and producer after that, and that was a German film in 2016. Which, to be honest, does sound good.)
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2022 at 11:51 am and is filed under Movies, Obits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Das Boot was originally a 5 (8?) part German TV series, which I only learned recently. I saw the first US release in the 5th Avenue theater in Seattle, before it was cut drastically, and was blown away. I’d love to get the full series as shown in Germany.
Troy was far less wonderful – it featured a frog-hopping Achilles, several poor performances, and the maps were, um, less than accurate. Cannot recommend.
Kurt
We haven’t watched the TV series, but Lawrence and I watched (and I believe he owns) “Das Boot: The Director’s Cut”.
There’s a “Das Boot Complete Edition” which includes the director’s cut, the original release, the entire TV series, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I’d love to own that, but I can’t find a US region version.