Manhattan Project - Der atomare Alptraum

Manhattan Project - Der atomare Alptraum (1986)

The Manhattan Project

Der 17jährige Schüler Paul Stevens hat in der benachbarten Nuklearfabrik ein Fläschchen hochkonzentriertes Plutonium geklaut und daraus seine eigen Atombombe gebastelt. Jetzt ist Paul als einzige Privatperson Mitglied im exklusivsten Club der Welt: dem Atomclub. Seine Mitglieder: USA, UdSSR, Frankreich, China, Großbritannien... Mit der Bombe im Gepäck und seiner hübschen Freundin Jenny an der Hand macht Paul sich nach New York auf, um die hochbrisante Heimarbeit auf einer wissenschaftlichen Ausstellung zu präsentieren. Von Polizei und FBI gejagt, bleibt ihm nur ein letzter Ausweg...

Erscheinungsdatum
1986-06-13
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (123)
Laufzeit
1 Std. 58 Min.
Genres
Science Fiction, Thriller
Regie
Marshall Brickman

Besetzung

Wissenswertes

  • Gedreht in: New York City und New Jersey
  • Auszeichnungen: 1 · Nominierungen: 0. Darunter: Saturn-Präsident-Gedächtnispreis

The Manhattan Project is a 1986 American science fiction thriller film. Named after the World War II-era program that constructed the first atomic bombs, the plot revolves around a gifted high school student who decides to construct an atomic bomb for a national science fair. It was directed by Marshall Brickman, based upon his screenplay co-written with Thomas Baum, and starred Christopher Collet, John Lithgow, John Mahoney, Jill Eikenberry and Cynthia Nixon. This film – a box-office bomb whose ticket sales recovered just 21 percent of its budget – was the first from the short-lived Gladden Entertainment.

Production

After making Lovesick, Brickman was interested in doing something other than comedy.

"Jokes are easy," he said. "Humor comes to me so easily I'm suspicious of it. I secrete jokes like the pancreas secretes...whatever the pancreas secretes. I wanted character, I wanted to go for the emotions that the kid feels, that the scientist feels; I wanted the audience to feel the seductiveness of machinery."

He chose the Manhattan Project. However he decided against doing something historical because "It's such a monster to do, the scope is so enormous – I couldn't come up with a viable way to make it that wouldn't cost under $60 million to produce." He instead decided to do something in a contemporary setting which dealt with the same themes.

"I became fascinated with the two worlds that coexist in America now," he says. "The one world of ordinary citizens, like the kid in the movie who has all the concommitant problems of adolescence – sex and girls and school and then the other world, which is the world of the military–industrial complex, and within that world the sort of high-priesthood of nuclear-weapons planners and designers.

He also thought "it might be a good idea to approach the bomb as another consumer item, which in a sense it is. You know, it provides a lot of jobs, a lot of work, and ironically a lot of good side-effects."

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