Is Denzel Washington's Flight Based On A True Story?
2012's "Flight" tells the story of Captain Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) pulling an extremely unorthodox move to save every single one of his passengers in an emergency situation. However, Whip doesn't have the trappings of a hero when we first meet him. He's a drug addict and alcoholic who brings his troubles to work, but when a small malfunction puts his entire plan at risk, Whip is struck by sudden inspiration. He inverts the plane and flies it upside down to an empty field, where it then crash lands with 96 out of 102 passengers still alive.
Whip's act of heroism is really just the inciting incident of a drama that finds his life turned upside down, but the image of his inverted plane streaking across the sky will stay with you long after watching the movie. But did it really happen? "Flight" feels like film based on a true story because of the grounded story, not to mention how well the characters are written and how strong all the performances throughout the movie are. In reality, though, screenwriter John Gatins invented the tale out of thin air, though a small piece of real-world inspiration that he used actually came from a real horrifying aviation tragedy.
The plane crash that inspired Flight
"Flight" is a completely fictional story. Captain Whip Whitaker isn't a real person, and the problems he encounters throughout the movie were completely made up. Screenwriter John Gatins wanted to tell an original story about a troubled pilot struggling to do right, but he did borrow one small detail from a real-life plane crash. Believe it or not, Captain Whitaker's upside down flight maneuver actually has a precedent in reality.
Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crashed in January 2000. A single jackscrew in the plane failed, causing the entire vehicle to plummet toward the ground. The pilots on board Flight 261 briefly flipped the plane while flying it in for its crash landing, and some unsettling audio from the accident proves that they were just as amazed as anyone that the plane was capable of flying upside down. Tragically, unlike the movie, the unorthodox maneuver wasn't enough to save Flight 261. In the end, all the passengers and the pilots were killed in the crash.
Getting Flight made was no easy task
Even without having a true story to fuel it, "Flight" felt like a surefire hit. Denzel Washington is a massive star, and the story has a compelling hook.Throughout the many years that John Gatins was developing the film, however, there were plenty of times that the project seemed like a lost cause.
Gatins started writing the story in the early 2000s, but at the time, it was hard to find a studio willing to take on an R-rated movie that didn't have mass genre appeal. In 2010, Denzel Washington read the script and signed onto the movie, but even his star power wasn't enough to get it greenlit right away.
Director Robert Zemeckis finally got on board in 2011, but he had to negotiate the budget with Paramount Pictures, which was concerned about the cost of the special effects needed for the movie. "Flight" is far from being one of the most expensive movies ever made, but the airplane sequences still called for some serious cash. Ultimately Zemeckis and Washington took pay cuts to ultimately get Paramount to agree to make the film. At that point, they couldn't be sure that "Flight" would break even, much less become a big financial success that would be well-remembered more than a decade after its debut.
Thankfully, the movie debuted to positive reviews, and it made a killing at the box office, earning over $161 million globally off a roughly $30 million budget. While it may be on the lower end of the best films in Denzel Washington's career, it still has a place in Hollywood history.