Nightfall

Nightfall (1988)

The people of the planet Aeon, blessed with three suns, have never experienced night. When an archeological excavation uncovers evidence of an ancient catastrophe, all signs point towards the impending darkness of the very Nightfall. Panic erupts as the suns slowly disappear one by one. Science struggles against superstition as the people race to comprehend the approaching Nightfall... the end of the world as they know it. Based on Isaac Asimov's classic story "Nightfall" voted "The Greatest Science-Fiction Story of All Time."

Date of release
1988-04-15
TMDB
4.1 / 10 (22)
Runtime
1h 23m
Genres
Science Fiction
Director
Paul Mayersberg

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Nightfall

Nightfall is a 1988 American independent science fiction film written and directed by Paul Mayersberg, based on the 1941 short story of the same name by Isaac Asimov.

Production

Nightfall was the short story which helped establish Isaac Asimov's reputation when it was published in 1941. Julie Corman became aware of it in 1979 when she read a review of an Asimov anthology in the New York Times. She was attracted by a story "about people who have recognizable moral dilemmas", and bought the screen rights.

When Asimov turned down the chance to adapt the story himself, Julie Corman approached Paul Mayersberg, then best known for writing The Man Who Fell to Earth. He passed so she tried a number of different writers.

"The problem was getting a script that had the essence of Nightfall and also had good, involving characters", says Corman. "Some of the scripts that we developed were excellent on the science-fiction elements, but they weren't very visual. In other versions, the characters were incredibly good but Asimov's philosophical war of words had been played down. Along the way.

In July 1987 Corman eventually went back to Mayersberg after seeing his directorial debut, Captive (1986). Mayersberg agreed to write the script if he could direct. Corman agreed. Mayersberg wrote the script in five weeks in London and the film was shot over an eight-week period in October 1987. The film was one of the most artistically bold ever made by New Horizons.

Mayersberg said he believed "film is not a very good medium for science fiction, it's visual, and therefore not very imaginative... film can only show you what exists, that which we can already see with our eyes, If you want to imagine a city in space, you have to build a model— and frankly, it looks like a model."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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