“It’s a movie you don’t see get made anymore.”
This was the comment of Hollywood actor Channing Tatum who stars as a NASA launch director in the stylish comedy-drama “Fly Me to the Moon.”
The movie is set in the high-stakes historical backdrop of NASA’s Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, which saw American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as the first humans on the moon.
“Fly Me to the Moon” features Channing as NASA launch director Cole Davis and Scarlett Johansson as marketing virtuoso Kelly Jones, who clash in this Space Age romantic comedy set in the ’60s.
Brought in to “sell the moon” to America ahead of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, sparks fly in all directions as Kelly wreaks havoc on Cole’s already difficult task of preparing for the space trip.
When the White House deems the space mission too important to fail, Kelly is directed to stage a fake moon landing as backup in case things don’t go well for Neil Armstrong and his crew.
However, this does not sit well with Cole.
Channing said his new movie was “smart and big,” adding that “mounting a movie of this size is kind of like shooting a rocket to the moon.”
“It was unlike any script that I’ve been reading lately. It’s a movie you don’t see get made anymore. It has an older tone, but it does feel modern,” the actor said of the story.
“When I met with Greg Berlanti, the director, I thought we were going to do this very, like, pastiche sort of tone, like “His Girl Friday” or something like that, but he was like, ‘No, definitely, I want it to be you guys and really play with it,'” Channing said.
“His Girl Friday” is a 1940 screwball comedy film starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant. It is considered among the “best movies of the past decade.”
“He really wanted us to improv a little as well, and that kind of made it a little bit more modern and not so rigid. It just has a really strange tone that I really loved, and set in a big, epic setting of our history in time in America,” Channing continued, referring to “Fly Me to the Moon.”
The actor also opened up about his character, Cole.
“Cole was a very good pilot and he always wanted to go to the moon, that’s why he came to NASA,” he said.
“Turns out he had a medical condition that wouldn’t let him go, and now he’s going to take it upon himself to basically get all his friends that are pilots themselves [to the moon],” Channing shared.
“They’re very close and he’s going to be responsible for coaching them to get to the moon. At the time, it was really, really bad. They were not winning this race, and he was feeling the pressure. And then a saving grace angel comes in and gets him the money that he actually needs to be able to do this, but kind of against his will,” he added.
The movie also sees Scarlett as one of its producers, apart from being the leading lady.
She was originally going to be behind the scenes, but the script convinced her otherwise.
Her character is written as a “strong woman.”
“I never intended on playing Kelly,” Scarlett revealed.
“But when the script came in, it was so great. It was such a wonderful read and the dialogue was so strong. And as a woman producer, working with a woman writer, who had created a strong woman character — well, it felt right,” she shared.
Scarlett also reflected on the film’s story, saying that “it’s so unusual these days” that a movie is shown in theaters that “has an original story and has this kind of scope.”
“It’s a big movie but the story itself is very intimate, it’s like a character piece that’s in this massive, huge set piece,” the actress said.
“To me, getting to experience that in the fullest, watching it on the screen with an audience and get carried away, there’s a certain kind of nostalgia, a kind of magic to that tone of film that is not common now. So being able to experience that in theaters is like a wonderful night out,” she added.
“Fly Me to the Moon” is now showing in cinemas.
It is distributed in the Philippines by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.
