For a long time an October 18 release date was rumored for Alfonso Cuaron‘s long-awaited Gravity, a film I placed #3 on my list of Top 10 Most Anticipated Films of 2013. Where the date came from no one really knows, but it wasn’t too far off as an official date of October 4 has now been set for the sci-fi feature starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. The question now is, Is that anticipation worth it?
The date suggests we may be looking at a Toronto Film Festival debut in September followed by an October release date. While an October release wouldn’t normally sound too enticing, this October is already looking stacked, and doing so beyond traditional horror fare. Films such as Spike Lee’s Oldboy remake and Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips both hit theaters on October 11 and on October 25 comes Edgar Wright’s The World’s End.
Gravity bounced around the 2012 release date, landing in November and then getting bumped to early 2013 before becoming undated altogether. Let’s hope this new date actually sticks as it would nice to see some studio confidence in the feature and have them start building a marketing campaign around it.
As for the story, here’s the most recent plot synopsis:
Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone–tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness. The deafening silence tells them they have lost any link to Earth…and any chance for rescue. As fear turns to panic, every gulp of air eats away at what little oxygen is left. But the only way home may be to go further out into the terrifying expanse of space.
Back in August 2011, filmmaker and friend of Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, spoke a little about Gravity and said, “Alfonso and [cinematographer] Emmanuel Lubezki are absolutely pushing a new boundary in filmmaking, and completely mind-blowing… The way they’re making that movie, I think, will forever change certain types of productions. The engineering and ingenuity of the machines they created to film that way is fantastic.”
Word back then was the film would be comprised of 60% CGI and the opening was to be a single shot intended to last at least 20 minutes.
I can feel myself getting excited all over again.
