10 years of Gravity: why Alfonso Cuarón didn’t really film in space
For Sandra Bullock, “it was not direct!”
It’s a journey into the stars that we still haven’t forgotten. Exactly ten years ago it was released in theaters Gravitythe masterpiece ofAlfonso Cuarón. The director remembers today this experience which earned him an Oscar (the film won 7 in total).
Interviewed by Empire Magazine, the filmmaker goes behind the scenes of production and says that he hoped, at the time, to be able to film Gravity actually in space. He would have been the first to achieve this feat since achieved by The challengeRussian production released in 2023 – while waiting for Tom Cruise’s spacewalk!
Alfonso Cuarón says that two major obstacles prevented his dream: money… and Sandra Bullock.
“What killed any possible discussion was Sandra. Because Sandra had already suffered two plane crashes. Not one, two! For her, flying is a great sacrifice. And for her, the idea of getting into a rocket or something like that, it was non-direct!”
NASA would have said no anyway.
Alfonso Cuarón and his team did indeed go to see the management of the American Space Agency. If only to get help filming certain scenes. She was initially excited, but after reading the script, NASA chose to distance itself from Gravity.
“In the beginning, NASA was a great help to us“, he explained. “We went to Houston. We talked about the space station, which was going to be an important element of the film. But when they read the script and saw that there was going to be some sort of catastrophe in space, they backed out, because that’s completely against NASA policy. So they could no longer support us.“
This did not prevent Gravity to collect $723 million at the box office and record 4 million admissions in France.
