00:00It was such a great script. You just don't read them that often.
00:05What if the moon landing was a hoax? That's the question explored in the new film Fly Me to the
00:10Moon, a romantic comedy set against the backdrop of the Apollo 11 moon launch during the space
00:14race of the late 1960s. Producer and star Scarlett Johansson, who plays marketing specialist Kelly
00:20Jones, opened up to The Hollywood Reporter about how the film came to be.
00:24So I have a production company called These Pictures, and we developed this story from an
00:29original idea like that we had in our company. And then we hired Rose Gilroy to write the script,
00:36and she did such a phenomenal job with the tone of it that when I read it, it was just,
00:41it was so entertaining. I loved the read so much that I couldn't not play the character of Kelly
00:48because it was so great. It was like, I couldn't think of, I was thinking like who else could do
00:52it? And of course I have like many peers that are incredibly talented that could do it. And
00:56then I would just be jealous of them. And so I was like, I can't, I'm not going to give this to
00:59somebody else. Johansson's co-star Channing Tatum, who plays launch director Cole Davis,
01:04weighed in on what he felt made the film's script unique.
01:07It's not a pre-existing IP. It's completely original, but it also has like, it has characters
01:13that are, that really talk to each other. You know, there was the dialogue is, is really,
01:17really well done. And, and like the character, I guess, development without making it all sort
01:23of over-rotten and like heavy, it keeps it light and fun, but yet keeping the drama and the
01:30dramatics intact. Director Greg Berlanti also spoke about what made him want to helm the project.
01:35I mean, it's not that often that I'm sent material that was, first of all, it was,
01:39Scarlett was starring in it. She was producing and she was throwing her weight behind a big budget
01:45original drama, comedy, romance, you know, it had everything. And honestly, those are, that's,
01:52it reminded me of the kind of movies I used to go see every weekend as a kid that studios were
01:56making all the time then. We can't afford to lose to the Russians. We need to shoot
02:06backup version of the moon landing. Following the release of the film's trailer online,
02:10some conspiracy theorists further questioned the integrity of the real moon landing.
02:15For both of you, what's your take on conspiracy theorists who have watched the trailer and said,
02:19oh, see the moon landing is fake. I'm so not a conspiracy theorist. I'm like very
02:24pragmatic and I'm like science. I believe in science. But you know, if that's like getting,
02:31if people are watching the trailer and that's what they're taking, then I guess we're doing our job.
02:35Yeah. You know, I don't know. I guess there, there's part of me that goes,
02:39I don't care if it was, or if it wasn't like, you know, it's so smart. If we faked it,
02:44I think that was probably one of the most like gangster moves that's ever been pulled on,
02:48on like the world because it was just a, you know, it was a race to the moon and we won
02:53theoretically. Um, but I, I, I think we went, I personally think we went, I think that the people
02:59that I talked to that actually were there that, you know, like it's not like they, they could do
03:06that. They, they spent so much money. There's so many people involved that we, we, people really
03:10saw the rockets go up. One of the reasons I was so excited to work on the film was NASA's
03:15involvement from the very beginning. And I think why NASA gave it their stamp of approval was they
03:20knew that even though we were taking a look at one of the OG conspiracy theories, that two things
03:27were happening. One, it's ultimately a movie about why the truth's important. And it's old.
03:33And it's also a movie that celebrates, you know, that celebrates what was accomplished.
03:38It was arguably the greatest accomplishment of humankind at that moment, and probably still,
03:45and certainly the largest televised event, you know, about it. And, uh, and, and I,
03:51my hope is that when people see the, it's not so much what they think prior to the movie,
03:55but when they see the movie that encourages them to go and that when they leave,
03:59they leave with a sense of like, wow, we did that.
04:01Fly Me to the Moon flies into theaters July 12th. For more on the film, head to THR.com.
04:07For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Tiffany Taylor.
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