Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is a visual treat, there would not be much of a debate about it. The director made his name after he landed on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and later went on to direct the dystopian thriller Children of Men which is considered one of the greatest sci-fi classics ever made. But despite the stunning critical acclaim, the movie was a huge box office flop pushing the director to go broke. But his desperate attempt to make Gravity didn’t land any studios initially and that’s where he asked for wise advice from different directors including David Fincher and James Cameron.
Alfonso Cuarón Developed Gravity While He Was Financially Struggling
Alfonso Cuarón. Image Credit: Julio Hardy/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Alfonso Cuarón was candid when he reflected on the chapter of his struggle to make Gravity starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney but initially, he was far from getting closer to making it a reality as Warner Brothers initially didn’t want to invest a boatload of money on the ambitious project.
“After Children of Men, which was a complete commercial flop, the appetite to work with me plummeted,” Cuarón said at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland before receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award at the festival (via Deadline). For context, Children of Men made $70 million worldwide on a $76 million budget.
“So I started writing and developing a film with my son. I started prepping and the cast featured Charlotte Gainsbourg and Guillaume Canet. It was about a road trip from the South of France to the north of Scotland. It was very difficult to finance and the film fell apart. At the same time, I was going through the worst times in my personal life.”
The director was “completely out of money” and as he went on to explore ideas, his potential producers had warned him about “no arty shit.” He was in desperate need of a project to land him a decent paycheck from a studio. While discussing the project with his longtime collaborator and acclaimed cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, the director didn’t take long to realize that the movie was not so simple, not technologically anyway.
Alfonso Cuarón Sought Help From David Fincher And James Cameron
James Cameron and David Fincher. Image Credit: Angela George/CC BY-SA 3.0 and Raffi Asdourian/ CC BY 2.0
As he visualized the concept of Gravity and wrote the initial draft with his son Jonás Cuarón, director Alfonso Cuarón was quite desperate to make his film a reality when he was almost broke. The director sought help from The Killer director David Fincher and James Cameron and Fincher gave him brutally honest advice and he was right as Cuarón got a clear picture of what he was going to make.
“Fincher told us to forget about it, there’s no tech, wait 6 years. And he wasn’t wrong,” Cuarón said. While Fincher asked him to wait for six years, James Cameron who has been a master of technologically challenging movies including the Titanic and Avatar franchise gave him a way that was not possible to make it under a considerable budget. “James Cameron told us how we could do it but that was a $400 million film. We told him only you can do that. And he said yeah you’re right. So we developed our own way.”
When it seemed impossible to make the movie Cuarón and his cinematographer Lubezki found a way to minimize the budget achieving the look of space. “We developed the film over three or four years technologically,” the director said. “Thank God we had an exec who was very geeky,” he added.
However, the hurdles on his way were far from over as Warner Bros. wanted to screen test the movie before adding major VFX into the film, and the result was a poor response from the audience and the studio nearly lost all interest in the project. Thankfully, film festivals gave the project the response the director wanted. “It opened at Venice and the reception was amazing,” Cuarón said adding that “That’s when the studio started to love it.”
Gravity proved everyone wrong who doubted the prowess of the director. The movie earned Warner Bros. a stunning $732 million at the box office while claiming a leading 10 nominations at the 86th Academy Awards winning seven including Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects.
Buy/rent Gravity on Apple TV, Amazon and other VOD platforms.
