The cinematic space race was almost won a decade ago, but Sandra Bullock‘s bad experiences with flying put an end to the plan for Gravity to shoot in actual outer space.
When it comes to Sandra Bullock‘s best movies, nothing comes close to Gravity in terms of scale, and in terms of quality, too. Set almost entirely in the vastness of space, Gravity is one of the best science fiction movies of the 21st Century, for many reasons. Both Bullock and George Clooney deliver excellent performances, and it has a gripping story, but it’s in the technical elements that the Alfonso Cuaròn’s Oscar-winning epic really triumphs.
However, we nearly got an even bigger and bolder version of Gravity, and it would have taken the best George Clooney movie somewhere no other film had been before.
In an interview with Empire, Cuaròn explains why the plans to shoot his great masterpiece in literal space didn’t quite work out.
To put it simply, the number one reason, was money. It makes our eyes water just thinking about the budget behind some of the highest-grossing movies of all time, never mind what a production would cost if you actually left Earth’s atmosphere.
The second reason, is also pretty fair: “Number two, and the thing that killed the whole conversation, was Sandra. Because Sandra had already suffered two airplane accidents. Not one, but two. For her, flying is a big sacrifice. And for her the idea of getting into a rocket or something like that, it was a no-no, you know?”
Even if money and Bullock had been on their side, it’s very unlikely the Gravity crew would have been able to get to space anyway. “At the beginning NASA was very helpful with us. We went to Houston. We talked about the space station, which was going to be an important feature of the film. But when they read the script and saw that there was going to be a kind of disaster in space, that is pretty much against NASA’s policy. So they could not support us anymore,” Cuaròn concluded.
Yeah, we can’t imagine NASA wanting to explain how one of the best disaster movies turned into a tragic documentary. Better to keep your feet on the ground, so to speak.