George Clooney is the director of Midnight Sky, a new film on Netflix. The project is something that all viewers will be able to connect with due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. The plotline is about a dying man who becomes friends with a young girl after an unexpected disaster. The man is using his last amount of energy to warm a team of astronauts to be careful returning to earth because of an outbreak of nuclear disasters and radiation.
George Clooney was preparing to release the finished product earlier in the year but had to delay it due to COVID-19. He was planning on a worldwide release of the film for movie theaters, but he decided to stream it on Netflix instead of letting the movie sit on the shelf. He believes there is a striking comparison between what takes place in his film and what is going on in the real-world regarding public health and safety.
“When we first started, it was about all the things we’re capable of doing to mankind, the things we’re capable of doing to one another, including sort of destroying the Earth one way or another, whether it’s a nuclear holocaust or we blow a hole in the atmosphere,” Clooney stated. “The idea suddenly became, well, it’s actually the effects of the inability to be with the people you love and to be able to be near them, or even communicate with people at all.”
In addition to directing, Clooney also stars in the movie. He plays a dying astronomer who meets a young girl who also survived the disaster. Together they use technology in order to warn the astronauts of the impending doom on earth.
It is difficult for David Oyelowo, who is also a part of the cast, to watch the film they produced and then see the number of new infections and deaths taking place in reality. “it was no longer fantasy in the same way,” he explained. “There is a moment in the film where we are all looking at planet Earth shrouded in this pollution, nuclear cloud, whatever. And I had that face looking at the TV for months, looking at the rising COVID numbers and what was going on worldwide.”
Kyle Chandler, another cast mate, said “We can’t see our loved ones, so instead we’re looking at them on video and our telephones and Zoom and what have you. Everything’s pretty impersonal. There are so many pieces of the film that have imitated life that it’s really incredible.”
Felicity Jones, who is also in the movie, said that the film did not feel like fiction any more, instead it felt more like reality. “Exploring what the world was and what is the future for our children became even more relevant”.
“We thought we were pretty untouchable, didn’t we? And our foundations have been completely shaken up in a way that we just could have no idea of how strange that would be,” Jones adds. “It is definitely something that the film is taking to an extreme. It’s almost one step further than we are now. So in some respects, it’s a bit of a warning shot, as is the pandemic.”
George Clooney believes that the global pandemic is going to change the way we live our lives going forward. He is hopeful that the audiences that stream the film on Netflix will see a world similar to their own, and get motivated to do things that will make the world safer and stronger for future generations. While Clooney ideally wanted this film to be a blockbuster at the movie theaters, he has chosen to stream on Netflix because he feels that now is the best time to tell the story of Midnight Sky, rather than waiting for the vaccines and other medical procedures to take place. Also, it has been projected that COVID-19 will be mitigated sometime in the second quarter of 2021. Waiting to release the movie at that point would not be such a good idea because audiences are not going to want to see films that are nothing like the anxiety-filled year of 2020. Launching the movie now gives audiences something to relate to and look forward to as the scientists are preparing to implement a mitigation strategy on COVID-19.