(Credits: Far Out / Netflix)
Sandra Bullock, one of Hollywood’s most famous and respected actresses, has more or less her pick when it comes to future roles. 1994s Speed has proven that she is more than capable of holding her own in the action/thriller genre, while Miss Congeniality in 2000, she demonstrated that she has comedic chops.
However, her later works proved to be the most profitable of her career. At the very top is the 2015 animation. Minions – spin-off from despicable Me which focuses on those bizarre yellow creatures that seem to have stolen the hearts of every child in the Western Hemisphere. Second after MinionsHowever, a year earlier, a much more adult project was released: Alfonso Cuaron’s masterpiece sci-fi drama “G”.bliss.
In this 2013 sensation, Bullock played an astronaut who loses contact with her space station after it is struck by deadly space debris. Drifting alone in space, she must make a brave and desperate attempt to return to Earth, while battling the dangers of weightlessness and her rapidly deteriorating sanity. It was a runaway hit, earning Bullock a second Academy Award nomination and hundreds of millions in box office receipts.
However, at first, neither Cuaron nor Bullock were confident in the film’s success. It wasn’t a role she was unsure of—the character of Dr. Ryan Stone was the driving force behind her decision to take on the project. Bullock would say Collider how after “longing to do, emotionally and physically, what my male colleagues had always had to do,” she came up with this script in which the female lead “was integral to the story,” adding: “I don’t want to say it’s revolutionary, but it’s revolutionary.”
The filming itself was not easy, but the question is whether the audience will respond well to it. Gravity or not, it remained a problem. Bullock told The keeper, “We had no idea if it would be successful. You explained that it was an avant-garde, existential film about loss and survival in space, and everyone was like, ‘OK…’ It doesn’t seem like it’s a film that attracts people.”
Likewise, Cuarón, who initially thought his film would be “a simple story about one woman in space,” got more than he bargained for when filming extended from about one year to four. “Every day we thought, ‘This isn’t going to work,'” the director explained. “It was a process of trial and error, little, little hints of hope, but also a lot of mistakes. The only test screening we did a few months before the film was completed turned out to be a disaster.”
The film ultimately became such a critical and commercial hit that it remains a highlight of Bullock and Cuarón’s careers. Whether they made significant changes after this test run or not, this “small, intimate film” won over audiences in a big and explosive way.
