International distributors are looking to the story of an Alabama Medal of Honor winner to be this year’s big hit, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Hacksaw Ridge” is the Mel Gibson-directed film about Desmond T. Doss, a Piedmont Alabama man who was a conscientious objector during WWII, but served as a medic and went on to become the only conscientious objector to awarded the Medal of Honor.
Some see the film as the biggest hope for an international hit, according to THR.
In their THR story, Scott Roxborough and Pamela McClintock quote a co-producer of the film saying it has all the elements to be an international hit.
“The industry desperately needs another big hit to spread some money around,” said Stuart Ford, CEO of IM Global, which co-produced “Hacksaw Ridge” and is selling it worldwide.
“And this kind of movie — a big action film, with great reviews — has all the elements that should mean it works, in the U.S. but especially internationally.”
Andrew Garfield stars as Doss, who saved more than 75 lives during the WWII Battle of Okinawa.
The film, which Lionsgate is releasing domestically, is projected to open in the $12 million to $15 million range.
“It’s a strong and intense movie about a man who stayed true to himself and did something incredible,” said Jasna Vavra, whose Universum Film has “Hacksaw Ridge” for Germany. “We’re sure it will be very successful.”
Doss has honored in Alabama long before this film. Desmond T. Doss, Sr. Memorial Highway is a two-mile stretch of Alabama Highway 9 that in 2008 was named in his honor. It is in Piedmont, Ala., where Doss died in 2006 at the age of 87.
“Hacksaw Ridge” also won’t be the first film about Doss. He was also the focus of the 2004 documentary “The Conscientious Objector.”
Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist didn’t believe in killing or in working on the Sabbath, became a medic so he wouldn’t have a weapon and so he could do it on the Sabbath because he believed God would not look upon healing as working.
Even before he won the Medal of Honor, Private Doss had received the Bronze Star for his work as a combat medic in the Philippines.
It was for his actions during the 1945 battle for Okinawa that he won America’s highest military award. On May 5, 1945, U.S. soldiers had taken a 400-foot-high-ridge, only to be driven back by a Japanese counterattack. While most of the soldiers were able to retreat, numerous U.S. wounded were stranded. Through unrelenting enemy fire, Doss carried each of the wounded men out of the line of fire and then lowered them one-by-one to safety on a rope-supported litter he had created. Only when they were safe, did he evacuate the ridge himself.
For two weeks, he carried out rescues in the face of enemy fire until he was wounded by grenade shrapnel. Instead of calling for help, he treated his own wounds and waited for five hours. When he was finally being carried off on a litter, he saw a soldier injured worse than he was, and ordered the medics to let the soldier take his place. While waiting for help to return, his arm was fractured by enemy fire. It was then he used a rifle for the first time, tying it to his arm as a splint and crawling 300 yards to a first-aid station.
When he was awarded the Medal of Honor, the presentation said he had saved 75 soldiers. He later said the number was probably closer to 50, according to his obituary in the New York Times.
Although Doss was wounded three times in the war, his worst injury was tuberculosis, which cost him a lung before being discharged from the Army. When he died in 2006 in Piedmont it was after being hospitalized for breathing troubles.
Read the entire THR story at http://bit.ly/2fCBaqS
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