Meteor

Meteor (1979)

It's five miles wide... it's coming at 30,000 m.p.h... there's no place on Earth to hide!

After a collision with a comet, a nearly 8km wide piece of the asteroid "Orpheus" is heading towards Earth. If it hits, it will cause an incredible catastrophe that will probably extinguish mankind. To stop the meteor, NASA wants to use the illegal nuclear weapon satellite "Hercules," but discovers soon that it doesn't have enough firepower. Their only chance to save the world is to join forces with the USSR, which has also launched such an illegal satellite. But will both governments agree?

Date of release
1979-10-19
TMDB
5.2 / 10 (183)
Runtime
1h 47m
Genres
Science Fiction, Thriller, Action
Director
Ronald Neame

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $8.4M
  • Budget: $16M
  • Earned 0.5× its budget
  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Meteor is a 1979 science-fiction disaster film directed by Ronald Neame, from a screenplay by Stanley Mann and Edmund H. North. It stars Sean Connery and Natalie Wood, along with an ensemble cast featuring Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Richard Dysart and Henry Fonda.

Production

Theodore R. Parvin received the idea for the story from a Saturday Review article by Isaac Asimov about a meteor hitting a major city in the United States. Parvin hired Edmund H. North to write the screenplay, and North took further inspiration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Project Icarus.

During the writing of North's first draft, Parvin secured financing and investment from the Shaw Brothers Studio, Warner Bros. Pictures, Nippon Herald Films and American International Pictures (AIP). The film was an AIP co-production with British Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers. $2.7 million of the budget came from AIP.

Neame cast Natalie Wood as Tatiana because she was the daughter of Russian immigrants, and she worked with George Rubinstein to perfect a Leningrad accent. Alec Guinness, Yul Brynner, Rod Steiger, Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov, Eli Wallach, Telly Savalas, Theodore Bikel, Richard Burton and Orson Welles were each considered for the role of Dr. Dubov. Donald Pleasence was cast for the role and filmed a few scenes as the character.

Principal photography took place from October 31, 1977, to January 27, 1978, mainly at MGM Studios in Culver City, California, with some location filming in Washington, D.C., St. Moritz, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. The release date was scheduled for June 15, 1979, but it was pushed back to October 19 due to special effects reshoots after special effects director Frank Van der Veer was fired.

Veteran effects artist Frank Van de Veer's work was deemed unusable and subsequently discarded after much had already been shot, and William Cruse and Margo Anderson were hired to reshoot as many special effects as possible with what money remained in the special effects budget. Their work was also deemed unsuitable, and were also fired.

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