The 80-year-old actor turned director Clint Eastwood might be famous for his roles in films including “Dirty Harry”, “The Good The Bad And The Ugly” and “Rawhide”, but he also won acclaim for his work as a director in many films such as “Unforgiven”, “Million Dollar Baby”, “Letters from Iwo Jima”, and “Mystic River”. Haven’t losing his steam yet, soon after finished the “Invictus”, a film starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon about how Nelson Mandela used the 1995 rugby World Cup to unite post-apartheid South Africa, the veteran filmmaker is already gearing up for his next movie, “Hereafter”. “I keep finding interesting stories, or they come to me, so I’ll keep making movies.” He uttered. And this new one is a spec supernatural thriller by "Frost/Nixon" and "The Queen" scribe Peter Morgan. Though Eastwood has twice cast himself as something like an angel of death, in the existential westerns “High Plains Drifter” and “Pale Rider”, he has never made a film on an overtly supernatural subject before. Eastwood was attracted to the script because he was in fact keen to direct a supernatural thriller, and liked how Morgan incorporated real-world events into fiction. Eastwood told LA Weekly, "There's a certain charlatan aspect to the hereafter, to those who prey on people's beliefs that there's some afterlife, and mankind doesn't seem to be willing to accept that this is your life and you should do the best you can with it and enjoy it while you’re here, and that'll be enough. There has to be immortality or eternal life and embracing some religious thing. I don't have the answer. Maybe there is a hereafter, but I don't know, so I approach it by not knowing. I just tell the story."
“Hereafter” tells the story of three people who are haunted by mortality in different ways. Matt Damon plays American factory worker George, who is somehow able to communicate with the dead but prefers not to. On the other side of the world, a French television journalist Marie (Cécile de France) has a near-death experience (survives a tsunami) that shakes her reality; and Frankie and George McLaren play Marcus and Jason, an English boy and his brother who is killed in a car accident. Each on a path in search of the truth, their lives will intersect, forever changed by what they believe might--or must--exist in the hereafter. Bryce Dallas Howard, Lyndsey Marshal, Jay Mohr and Thierry Neuvic have supporting roles.
# Peter Morgan sold the script on spec to DreamWorks in 2008, and the studio retained the script following its split from Paramount Pictures and began talks with Clint Eastwood to direct. But it eventually transferred to Warner Bros by the time Eastwood had signed on to direct in 2009.
# Matt Damon described “Hereafter” as Eastwood's "French film".
# Eastwood also compared the structure to French films "where the stories kind of converge together, and destiny drives each person towards the other". The tone of the film has been described by the director as a chick flick, "But one that men will like too. Or at least one that won't make them want to stick a Swiss Army Knife in their leg."
# Damon was cast in the film because Eastwood was so impressed with his performance in “Invictus”. The original “Hereafter” production schedule clashed with Damon's filming commitments to “The Adjustment Bureau”, so he emailed Eastwood, suggesting that the director recast the role of George for either Christian Bale, Casey Affleck or Josh Brolin. Instead, Eastwood altered the filming schedule to accommodate Damon, and the actor was able to complete both films.
# Eastwood selected Frankie and George McLaren to play the twin brothers despite them having never acted before because he did not want "child actors who'd been over-instructed in Child Acting 101."
# The film have its world premiere in September 2010 as a Special Presentation at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. It will also screen on October 10, 2010 as the Closing Night Film of the 48th New York Film Festival.
# “Hereafter” mark the first time Eastwood has shot in UK since making his “White Hunter, Black Heart” at Pinewood studios back in 1989.
Theatrical release dates:
Oct 22, 2010: USA
Jan 21, 2011: Spain
Jan 27: Germany
Sources: IMDB, Wikipedia – Photos courtesy of Warner Bros
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