Tagline: A Return to Witch Mountain
Race to Witch Mountain movie storyline. In Las Vegas, the regenerated ex-con Jack Bruno works as taxi driver. During an UFO Convention at Planet Hollywood, the skeptical Jack picks up Dr. Alex Friedman, who will present a scientific lecture in the event. Then he is pressed by two henchmen of his former boss, the criminal Wolff, that wants to talk to him, but Jack does not want to return to the crime life. Jack fights and gets rid of them; out of the blue, he finds two teenagers on the backseat of his cab.
They tell that they are siblings, Sara and Seth, and they need to travel to a location outside Las Vegas in the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile the government finds a spacecraft that crashed nearby Las Vegas and is chasing the two aliens; after the investigation of the men of Major Henry Burke, they discover that the two siblings are the aliens. Jack Bruno, Sara and Seth are chased by Henry Burke’s team and by the “Syphon”, a killer from outer space that has been sent to kill them by the military of their planet that want to invade Earth. Sara and Seth explain that they traveled to Earth to collect scientific data of an experiment and save Earth from invasion, but they need to return immediately to their planet. Jack teams up with Dr. Alex to retrieve their spacecraft in a secret base in the Witch Mountain.
Race to Witch Mountain is a 2009 American science fiction adventure thriller film and a remake of the 1975 Disney film Escape to Witch Mountain, which is based on the 1968 novel of the same name by Alexander Key. The film is directed by Andy Fickman and stars Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Alexander Ludwig, Ciarán Hinds, and Carla Gugino.
Despite the mixed outcome, the film turned out to be a box office hit. It became the first Disney film in 2009 to open at #1, grossing $24.4 million. The film would go on to gross over $67 million at the North American domestic box office, and over $39 million internationally, for a total of $106 million.
About the Production
For years, stories have circulated about a secret place in the middle of the Nevada desert known for unexplained phenomena and strange sightings. It is called Witch Mountain, and when Las Vegas cab driver Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson) encounters two teens with supernatural powers in his cab, he suddenly finds himself in the middle of an adventure he can’t explain. Working together, Jack and his young passengers discover that the only chance to save the world lies in unraveling the secrets of Witch Mountain, and the race begins.
For many moviegoers in the 1970s, “Escape to Witch Mountain” and its sequel, “Return from Witch Mountain,” were popular science-fiction adventures that became warmly recalled touchstones of youth as those audiences grew from children to adults. The central duo of both films, alien children Tony and Tia, became icons of sorts, their adventures fondly recalled by scores of viewers who introduced the films to their own children by watching television, videotapes or DVDs.
Such was the popularity of these films that Gunn Films’ founder, producer Andrew Gunn, asked to attempt a new version of the “Witch Mountain” story once he made a deal to operate his company at Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. He had found success with his remake of the studio’s “Freaky Friday” in 2003 and wanted a chance to create something new for “Witch Mountain.”
But this re-imagined version would be a much more action-filled story, complete with breathtaking sequences and state-of-the-art special effects. “It is no accident we ended up with the title `Race to Witch Mountain,’” says Gunn, “because once this film starts, it takes off like a shot. We wanted it to be a ride that, once you got on, you weren’t getting off until the end.”
Director Andy Fickman, who had just completed the hit comedy “The Game Plan” for Walt Disney Pictures, heard that Gunn was contemplating a reworking of the “Witch Mountain” franchise. “I loved `Escape to Witch Mountain’; it was one of my all-time favorite films as a kid,” says Fickman. “Nothing excited me more than the movie as well as reading the book it was based upon. So when I was given an opportunity after `The Game Plan’ to continue my relationship with Disney, I told them I wanted to make `Race to Witch Mountain’ as memorable for audiences today as it was for me in 1975.”
For Fickman, having a fascination for the unexplained and inexplicable began almost at birth-he was born in Roswell, New Mexico, a small town made infamous by a supposed crash of a UFO that the government and the military allegedly covered up. And in “Race to Witch Mountain,” that predilection for the mysterious (along with the Roswellian theme of the collision of two worlds) proves central to the plot of the high-octane story and highly enjoyable storyline.
It is, indeed, that element of the ordinary meeting the extraordinary that he found so compelling. “`Race to Witch Mountain’ is a great action-adventure story,” says Fickman. “It is a fantastic journey in which the most unlikely of heroes end up saving not one world, but two worlds.”
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
Race to Witch Mountain (2009)
Directed by: Andy Fickman
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Carla Gugino, Ciaran Hinds, Alexander Ludwig, Tom Everett Scott, Chris Marquette, Garry Marshall, Ike Eisenmann, Kim Richards, Kevin Christy
Screenplay by: Matt Lopez, Mark Bomback, Andy Fickman
Production Design by: David J. Bomba
Cinematography by: Greg Gardiner
Film Editing by: David Rennie
Costume Design by: Genevieve Tyrrell
Art Direction by: John R. Jensen
Music by: Trevor Rabin
MPAA Rating: PG sequences of action and violence, frightening and dangerous situations, and some thematic elements.
Distributed by: Walt Disney Pictures
Release Date: March 13, 2009
Views: 86
