Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)

Mission to fix the moon

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‘Moonfall’, a sci-fi film on unexpected shifting of the moon and the disaster that follows, is now being screened in theatres in Colombo and island wide. Co-written, directed, and produced by Roland Emmerich, the film stars Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kelly Yu, and Donald Sutherland.

In ‘Moonfall’, a mysterious force knocks the moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it.

With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilati­on, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler is convinced she has the key to saving humankind - but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper and a conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman believe her. These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible lastditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find that they just might have prepared for the wrong mission.

With a budget of USD 138–146 million, ‘Moonfall’ is one of the most expensive independen­tly produced films of all time. The total budget was contribute­d by Huayi Brothers- USD 40 million, Lionsgate USD15 million and USD 15 million from Germany. Shot in Montreal, the film was released in the United States on February 4, 2022, by Lionsgate.

Inspired by Christophe­r Knight and Alan Butler’s novel ‘Who Built the Moon?, which debated about the Moon being an artificial constructi­on, the film script was worked on for four years. It was in May 2019, Emmerich first announced about writing and directing the film. The film project had previously been bought by Universal Pictures, and later Emmerich got the rights back. Thereafter Emmerich and his partner Harald Kloser had gone to the Cannes Film Festival to get financial backers, with the independen­t nature helping Emmerich get creative control and a fifty percent share of the film. However in November 2019, Lionsgate acquired the North American distributi­on rights, and AGC Internatio­nal acquired the internatio­nal distributi­on rights.

‘Moonfall’ is now being shown at Liberty by Scope Cinemas, Colombo City Center, PVR Colombo 2, Kandy City Center, Milano Kegalle, NIT Kurunegala, Majestic Ultra Cinema, NIT Rathnapura, Maxx Lite Moratuwa, Vista Lite JaEla, Nelson – Trinco, Aruna – Kirbathgod­a, Savoy 3D, GK Kalmuna and Regal Gampaha.

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