As far as I can tell, there’s never been a feature film biopic on the Wright brothers. That seems surprising to me. They’re well-known people. It’s a dramatic story. It would be easy to portray on film. So why hasn’t any filmmaker ever done it?
The Wright Brothers (1997)
Kitty Hawk: The Wright Brothers’ Journey of Invention (2003)
The Wright Brothers (1996)
I haven’t seen any of them. I agree that a good ‘Hollywood’ Wright Brothers film would be great. As long as Jerry Bruckheimer didn’t have anything to do with it.
The problem is that Wilbur, the driving force behind the effort, is boring as dirt. Modest, even-tempered, never married, dead at 45. He’s a great man, but there’s no ‘character’ there, you know?
An interesting film could be made about the social context, the skeptics who declared heavier-than-air flight was impossible, and, even after it was proven possible, insisted it would never be important.
Something could also be done with the fact that until after WWII, airplanes were used for hardly anything but carrying mail and dropping bombs.
Who would play Orville, now that Frank Zappa is no longer with us?
It’s true that mail was a common use of aircraft, but in 1925 Ford introduced what might be called ‘the first airliner’ – the Trimotor. In the '30s Pan Am had routes from L.A. to Shanghai and Boston to London in their famous ‘Clipper’ flying boats. The '30s also saw the Douglas DC-1 and DC-3, and the Boeing 247 airliners. These were successful businesses, even during The Great Depression.
I actually did attempt to check this on IMDB. I searched for Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright as character names. The only credits I found were Around the World in 80 Days and an episode of a TV series. No idea why the searchs didn’t find the movies you’ve named.
There’s the Apollo 13 type of story - engineers overcoming one problem after another to achieve their goal. There’s the defense of their claims to have flown (many people believed they were hoaxers) and the legal battles to protect their ideas. And for a big final scene you have their father, who apparently was a doubter, finally agreeing to fly in one of their planes at the age of 82 and apparently enjoying the experience.
There was also the Winds of kitty Hawk, with Law and Order’s Michael Moriarty as Wilbur and Wilbur and Orville: The First to Fly with James and Stacy Keach as Wilbur and Orville.
True, but relatively few people ever flew in them; air travel did not become very commercially important until after WWII.
Just side note - my great grandfather may have been a relative, or a very close friend of the Wright brothers - there used to be several pictures of them all together, and at Kitty Hawk. However, much to my grandmother’s huge dismay, those pictures were put somewhere “safe” and never found again.
Bit of a hijack, but I always date my grandmother’s birth by saying she was born on Dec. 17th, 1904, the first anniversary of the Wright brother’s flight at Kitty Hawk.
And Grandma is still with us, at the age of 103!!! God willing, she’ll vote this November in her 21st straight presidential election.
I hear you, but even Apollo 13 kept to the human element–gruff bosses, worried wives, middle-class family living. There’s none of that with the Wrights.
You could center the movie on brotherhood. Historically, Wilbur traveled to Kitty Hawk alone at first. Orville must have thought he was crazy, but he joined his brother and helped him out. Probably not because he believed in flying machines, but to keep Wilbur from killing himself. Their deep fraternal bond overcomes mechanical problems, patent lawsuits, and the legions of naysayers. There’s a movie!
Ever see Big Night? It could be like that, but in the air.
There is a short that just finished filming last week in LA, with some up and coming actors. They spent about $1 mil on the short and will be in Clint Eastwood’s film festival. I’m sure they’ll make a feature of this version, there are a ton of people interested in it, very historical and has many ties to the aeronautical community.
Its because the REAL inventor of powered, heavier than air flight (Alberto Santos-Dumont) was first!
Please, don’t talk about this Johnny-come-lately. The real inventor was Clément Ader.
This has to be done by Michael Bay, with Bruce Willis as one of the brothers.
Yeah, right up there with the European discovery of porcelain.
Johnny Depp. Or Matt Damon.
The Wright Bros. were two of the greatest inventors in history, and boring as all get out. In order to add drama you’d have to make it one of those silly docu-dramas that get flamed to death. The reality is they were great engineers, and lousy people. Their paranoia about patent protection resulted in the delayed recognition for their accomplishment, along with retarding the development of the aircraft industry. It’s better that their brilliance exhibits itself in peoples imagination rather than an accurate depiction of a pair of meticulous douches, or a fanciful story.