Mercury Rising

Genre: Action/Thriller.

Studio: Universal Pictures.
Production Company:: Imagine Entertainment

Project Phase: In the Can.

Who's In It: Bruce Willis (Art Jeffries); Alec Baldwin (Lt. Colonel Nicholas Kudrow); Miko Hughes; Chi McBride; Kim Dickens; Peter Stormare; Robert Stanton; Carrie Preston; John Carroll Lynch; Bodhi Elfman.
Who's Making It: Harold Becker (Director); Larry Konner, Mark Rosenthal, Janet Peoples, David Peoples (Screenwriters); Brian Grazer, Karen Kehala(Producers); Ric Kidney, Joe Singer (Executive Producers); Peter Honess (Editor); Michael Seresin (Director of Photography); John Barry (Musical Score); based upon the book Simple Simon by Ryne Pearson.

Premise: An autistic teenager breaks the National Security Agency’s intelligence code. After his parents are murdered, the boy goes on the run from a government hitman with help of an emotionally isolated FBI agent (Willis).

Release Date: April 3, 1998.

Developments:

August, 1997... The film is now known by its new title Mercury Rising.

June 2, 1997... The film drops Simple from its title, opting for the more direct Simon instead.

Comments: None.

Rumors: Unknown.

Scoop Feedback:

May 27, 1997... [Special thanks to 'LAalla16102' for designing the project's page, and to 'filmjerk' for supplying additional information.]

Shooting will take place in South Dakota, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. this summer. The production officially begins on May 27th. [Filed by Constantine, 'widgett', 'frankie', 'H.B.', Christian, Miguel, anonymously.]

June 3, 1997... Miko Hughes, last seen in Zeus & Roxanne, will play the autistic boy in the film. [Reported by Christian and 'theshape'.]

Also, the film is now known as Simon, losing the 'Simple' from its title. [Sent in by 'theshape'.]

June 17, 1997... Kim Dickens will play Willis' love interest. [Sent in by 'deadpool'.]

August 24, 1997... The name Simon is gone from the title; Mercury Rising is the film's new moniker. [Sent in by 'Josh the Sandman', 'onefield', Joe Hanna, 'ttaylor', Lin Clayton and anonymously.]

August 26, 1997... Peter Stormare, a guy who suffers from "payback's a bitch" syndrome when the compys he tries to fry in The Lost World has joined the cast of Mercury Rising. [Scooped by Christian and 'Surfcity'.]

November 22, 1997... John Barry has signed to score the picture. [Scooped by 'Brently'.]

January 10, 1998... "Just saw a test screening of this new Bruce Willis/Alec Baldwin film tonight. The worst piece of schlock to come along in some time. It was implausible and silly.

"The basic plot is the National Security agency prints a telephone number encoded in a top secret government code in a word puzzle in a puzzle magazine. A nine-year-old kid with autism solves the supposedly unbreakable code, dialing the phone number. Baldwin's character, the man in charge of the code, decides to have the child and any record of his breaking the code erased, so he does not look like a failure, and because the child has in some way that is never really clarified or makes sense, put dozens of undercover operatives in danger by cracking the code. Bruce Willis, an FBI agent that should have been fired after the half hour long opening scene that has no relevance to the rest of the movie, but through silly storytelling is only reassigned, kidnaps the boy to protect him from Baldwin's men (anyone thinking Witness??)

"The movie is really silly, and not very fast paced. The only real highlight here is the autistic child's acting." [Review sent in by ' krylyyk'.]

February 7, 1998... Another test screening of the film for you:

"Just saw a test screening of the upcoming Bruce Willis - Alec Baldwin film MERCURY RISING. To put it mildly, this film was quite bland for Bruce Willis. Willis was good, as always, and Baldwin's screen time of about 5 minutes did not give him the opportunity to create a plausible bad guy. And other than the dialogue being ridiculous, the final confrontation between Willis and Baldwin was the most ridiculous thing I have seen in a LONG time. Obviously, it was a work print and needed some tighter editing. It should be cut from 2 hours to about 90 minutes. Then it would move faster and Baldwin would have comparatively more screen time. Overall, one and a half stars out of five." [Review submitted anonymously.]

April 1, 1998... " I saw a sneak preview tonight. The movie was decent enough, but as a THRILLER, I wasn't that thrilled. The plot is predictable, characters act stupidly just to move said plot along. SPOILER! One of the guys 'helping' Bruce Willis works at the National Security Agency. He types up a letter on a typewriter using carbon paper and has two copies! What does he do with the carbon? Balls it up and throws in the trash moments, before he is shot. The bad guy finds both copies of the letter, but does not take the carbon!! This carbon of course is what Bruce Willis gets and thus has his proof to take the bad guys down. Everyone in the audience I watched it with was amazed at this stupidity and were yelling out at the screen things like, 'Come on!' and 'Get real!' It was a free preview and I got my money's worth." [Sent in by 'Shelfboy'.]

April 3, 1998... While the film is set to premiere today, an interesting related debate is happening on the Internet. This scooper is the mother of a mildly autistic boy who belongs to a listserv for autistic people and their relatives and friends. She told us that another parent who is on the same listserv for posted a message about boycotting Mercury Rising because of the way it portrays autistic people. "From the posts going back and forth - including several from autistic people - it sounded like this guy was getting upset over nothing. But he's planning some kind of demonstration at the premiere, or barring that, the opening in the LA area." [Sent to us by Charlotte.]

Official Web Site: www.mercury-rising.com



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