00:00It was such a great script, you just don't read them that often.
00:05What if the moon landing was a hoax?
00:07That's the question explored in the new film Fly Me to the Moon,
00:10a romantic comedy set against the backdrop of the Apollo 11 moon launch
00:14during the space race of the late 1960s.
00:16Producer and star Scarlett Johansson, who plays marketing specialist Kelly Jones,
00:21opened up to The Hollywood Reporter about how the film came to be.
00:24So I have a production company called These Pictures,
00:26and we developed this story from an original idea that we had within our company.
00:33And then we hired Rose Gilroy to write the script,
00:36and she did such a phenomenal job with the tone of it
00:40that when I read it, it was so entertaining.
00:43I loved the read so much that I couldn't not play the character of Kelly
00:48because it was so great.
00:49I was thinking who else could do it,
00:52and of course I have many peers that are incredibly talented that could do it,
00:56and then I would just be jealous of them.
00:57And so I was like, I can't, I'm not going to give this to somebody else.
01:00Johansson'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,
01:11but it also has characters that really talk to each other.
01:15The dialogue is really, really well done,
01:19and the character, I guess development,
01:22without making it all sort of over-rotten and heavy,
01:26it keeps it light and fun,
01:27but yet keeping the drama and the dramatics intact.
01:32Director 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,
01:38first of all, Scarlett was starring in it,
01:40she was producing,
01:41and she was throwing her weight behind a big-budget,
01:45original drama, comedy, romance, you know,
01:49it had everything.
01:50And honestly, those are, that's,
01:52it reminded me of the kind of movies I used to go see every weekend
01:55as a kid that studios were making all the time then.
01:58We can't afford to lose to the Russians.
02:01We need to shoot a backup version of the moon landing.
02:08Following the release of the film's trailer online,
02:11some conspiracy theorists further questioned the integrity of the real moon landing.
02:15For both of you, what's your take on conspiracy theorists
02:17who have watched the trailer and said,
02:19oh, see, the moon landing is fake?
02:21I'm so not a conspiracy theorist.
02:23I'm like very pragmatic and I'm like,
02:25science, I believe in science.
02:28But, you know, if that's like getting,
02:31if people are watching the trailer and that's what they're taking,
02:33then I guess we're doing our job.
02:35Yeah, you know, I don't know.
02:36I guess there's part of me that goes,
02:39I don't care if it was or if it wasn't.
02:42Like, you know, it's so smart.
02:43If we faked it,
02:44I think that was probably one of the most, like,
02:46gangster moves that's ever been pulled on, like, the world.
02:50Because it was just a, you know,
02:51it was a race to the moon and we won, theoretically.
02:55But I think we went.
02:57I personally think we went.
02:58I think that the people that I talked to that actually were there,
03:03you know, like, it's not like they could do that.
03:06They spent so much money.
03:07There were so many people involved.
03:10People really saw the rockets go up.
03:12One of the reasons I was so excited to work on the film
03:14was NASA's involvement from the very beginning.
03:17And I think why NASA gave it their stamp of approval
03:19was they knew that even though we were taking a look
03:24at one of the OG conspiracy theories,
03:27that two things were happening.
03:28One, it's ultimately a movie about why the truth's important.
03:32And it's also a movie that celebrates, you know,
03:36that celebrates what was accomplished.
03:38It was arguably the greatest accomplishment of humankind
03:42at that moment and probably still
03:44and certainly the largest televised event, you know, about it.
03:49And my hope is when people see the film,
03:52it's not so much what they think prior to the movie,
03:55but when they see the movie, that it encourages them to go
03:58and that when they leave,
03:59they leave with a sense of like, wow, we did that.
04:02Fly Me to the Moon flies into theaters July 12th.
04:04For more on the film, head to THR.com.
04:07For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Tiffany Taylor.
04:12The Hollywood Reporter News
Comments