San Andreas is a 2015 American disaster film directed by Brad Peyton and written by Carlton Cuse, with Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore receiving story credit. The film stars Dwayne Johnson, in the lead role, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Ioan Gruffudd, Archie Panjabi and Paul Giamatti. Its plot centers on a massive earthquake caused by the San Andreas Fault, devastating the West Coast of the United States.
Principal photography of the film started on April 22, 2014, in Queensland, Australia, and wrapped up on July 28 in San Francisco. The film premiered in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on May 26, 2015, and was released in the United States on May 29. It received mixed reviews from critics, praising the visual effects and Johnson and Gugino's performances, but criticizing the plot and characters. The film grossed $474 million worldwide.
Caltech seismologist Dr. Lawrence Hayes and his colleague Dr. Kim Park are at Hoover Dam testing a new earthquake prediction model when a nearby and previously unknown fault ruptures, triggering a 7.1-magnitude earthquake that collapses the dam. Park sacrifices himself to save a young girl and gets swept away by the water.
Hayes discovers that the entire San Andreas Fault is shifting and will soon cause several massive earthquakes, potentially destroying cities along the fault line. He begins racing to warn the population of California, along with his students Alexi and Phoebe and reporter Serena Johnson.
When a 9.1-magnitude earthquake devastates Los Angeles and San Francisco, Ray Gaines, a chief rescue helicopter pilot of the LAFD, who is going through a divorce from his wife Emma, finds himself rescuing her from a skyscraper in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, their daughter Blake has been visiting San Francisco with Emma's new boyfriend, Daniel; at that moment, an earthquake strikes the city. Rubble from the collapsing parking garage pins her in Daniel's car. Panicking, Daniel leaves Blake in an act of cowardice. Ben Taylor, a British engineer seeking employment at Daniel's firm, and Ben's younger brother Ollie rescue Blake, and they reach Chinatown, successfully calling her parents for help.
Ray and Emma attempt to reach San Francisco in Ray's helicopter until it suffers a gearbox failure, forcing them to make an emergency landing at a shopping mall in Bakersfield. Amid the chaos of looting, Ray steals a truck to continue the journey. The pair encounters a couple broken down on the side of the road shortly before the San Andreas Fault, which has torn a large fissure through the highway and extends for the perceivable length of the fault in either direction.
Ray and Emma exchange the truck for an airplane the couple owns. As Blake, Ben, and Ollie attempt to reach Nob Hill to signal the pair after finding their previous meeting point at Coit Tower engulfed in flames, Ray and Emma parachute into AT&T Park just before a 9.6-magnitude quake hits, becoming the largest recorded earthquake in history.
As the quake subsides, having destroyed much of the city, Ray and Emma commandeer a boat to reach the group, only to realize a tsunami is approaching San Francisco Bay. Alongside a handful of other survivors in small ships, the two cross the wave before it crests, barely avoiding a container ship caught up in the tsunami wave. The ship crashes into the Golden Gate Bridge's center span, killing everyone on the bridge, including Daniel, who gets crushed by a falling shipping container.
The tsunami strikes the ruined city, capsizing a cruise ship and killing thousands more. Blake, Ben, and Ollie enter the Gate, a building whose construction Daniel had been overseeing, but are still caught by the wave. As the building begins to collapse, trapping Blake underwater, Ray dives in, rescues her, and performs CPR. Emma crashes the boat through a window and drives the five of them out of the collapsing building as Ray resuscitates Blake.
The survivors regroup at a relief camp on the other side of the bay, where the reconciled Ray and Emma talk about their future. On the remains of the Golden Gate Bridge, an American flag unfolds, giving hope that the city will recover and rebuild as rescue vehicles descend on the destroyed landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area, which now extends from San Jose to Santa Cruz, turning the San Francisco Peninsula into an island.
On December 1, 2011, it was announced that New Line Cinema was developing an earthquake disaster film, San Andreas: 3D, from a script by Jeremy Passmore and Andre Fabrizio;[2][5] Allan Loeb polished the script. On June 5, 2012, the studio set Brad Peyton to direct the film.[6] On July 18, 2012, New Line tapped Carlton Cuse to re-write the script for the earthquake disaster film.[7] On July 18, 2013, The Conjuring writers Carey Hayes and Chad Hayes were tapped by the studio to re-write the film again.[8] The film was also produced by New Line and Village Roadshow Pictures, along with Flynn Picture Company and Australian limited Village Roadshow.[9]
On October 14, 2013, Dwayne Johnson closed a deal to star in the film, playing the role of a helicopter pilot searching for his daughter after an earthquake.[10] On February 4, 2014, Alexandra Daddario joined the cast.[11] On March 12, 2014, Carla Gugino joined the cast, reuniting with Dwayne Johnson, with whom she starred in Race to Witch Mountain and Faster.[12] On March 14, 2014, Game of Thrones actor Art Parkinson joined the film's cast.[13] On April 1, 2014, Archie Panjabi joined the earthquake film.[14] On April 5, 2014, Todd Williams also joined the film, to play Marcus Crowlings, an old Army friend of Johnson's character.[15] On April 15, 2014, Colton Haynes was added to the cast of the film.[16] On April 29, Ioan Gruffudd joined the cast of the film. Gruffudd played Daniel Reddick, a wealthy real estate developer who is dating Johnson's character's estranged wife.[17] On May 28, Will Yun Lee joined the cast to play Dr. Kim Park, the co-director of the Caltech Seismology Lab in the film.[18] On June 11, Australian singer and actress Kylie Minogue joined the film to play Gruffudd's sister.[19]
On December 17, 2013, Variety reported that the film would be shot at Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.[9] The production was set to start in April 2014 in Queensland, with locations including Ipswich, various suburban locations across the Gold Coast, and Brisbane.[10][20] On March 20, 2014, it was announced that Gods of Egypt had started production in Australia, and San Andreas was set to begin soon after.[21] On April 16, 2014, Johnson tweeted photos from the training for the film.[22][23]
San Andreas premiered on May 26, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles.[40] It was initially scheduled for a 2D and 3D release on June 5, 2015,[41] but was later moved up a week.[42] San Andreas was also released in Dolby Vision, making it Warner Bros. Pictures' first film to adopt the format.[43]
San Andreas was released as a digital download, and on Blu-ray and DVD on October 13, 2015.[44] Upon its first week of release on home media in the U.S., the film topped the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert chart, which tracks overall disc sales, and debuted at number 2 at the Blu-ray Disc sales chart with 40% of unit sales coming from Blu-ray, a surprisingly low ratio given the film's over-the-top special effects. It was blocked by the Diamond Edition Blu-ray Disc edition of the 1992 Disney animated classic Aladdin.[45] As of 2016, it is available in 4K UHD Blu-ray.[46]
San Andreas grossed $155.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $319.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $474.5 million.[4] Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profit as $88.07 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it eighteenth on their list of 2015's "Most Valuable Blockbusters".[47] Since its release, the film remains the highest-grossing live-action Hollywood original film of the past seven years as of July 2022.[48]
San Andreas opened in North America across 3,777 theaters including a total of 3,200 3D locations.[49] Several days prior to the film's release various box office pundits were predicting a $40 million or more opening in North America.[3][50] It made $3.1 million from Thursday night showings[51] and $18.2 million on its opening day.[52][53] It earned $54.5 million in its opening weekend which was well above the tracking and predictions.[54][55] It was Johnson's biggest opening as a lead actor, surpassing the $36 million debut of his The Scorpion King in 2002 even after adjusting for inflation.[56] Warner Bros. distribution chief Dan Fellman commented about the successful opening, saying that audiences never get tired of disaster films, even going back to The Poseidon Adventure (1972). He added, "What also gets tiring is when you start to do sequels of the same thing. It needs to be fresh, and you have to have the right chemistry in the cast", pointing out the originality of the film, and the performances of Johnson and the other cast, as some of the factors behind the film's successful opening.[55] In its second weekend, it experienced a drop of 52% earning an estimated $26.4 million, falling in second place (behind Spy), but experiencing a smaller fall than that of other disaster movies.[57]
Outside North America, the film opened in a total of 60 countries in the same weekend, including France, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Australia.[58] It opened Wednesday, May 27 in 4 countries, added 38 countries on Thursday and 18 more countries on Friday, May 29[59] and through Sunday, May 31 earned a 5-day opening weekend total of $63.9 million from 15,420 screens in 60 countries debuting at first place in 55 of those countries as well as at the international box office.[60] In its second weekend, it added $97.7 million.[61] It topped the box office outside of North America for two consecutive weekends before being overtaken by Jurassic World in its third weekend.[61]
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