Sunshine

Sunshine is the latest film from Danny Boyle, the man behind “Trainspotting” in the 90′s and the reinvention of the zombie genre “28 Days Later”, Sunshine is set approximately fifty years in the future, with mankind on the brink of extinction, The sun is being extinguished and a team of astronauts are sent to detonate a bomb on the surface to reignite it, however they mysteriously go missing, and a second crew is sent as a last chance to save mankind which is where Sunshine picks up the story.

Danny Boyle wanted the cast to be truly immersed in the film, and ideally would have wanted to actually send them to space (which is obviously impossible), so as the film was being made in England, he tried to get the cast onto a North Sea oil rig, but surprisingly no rig would allow it. His next port of call was the sound stage the movie was being made in, hoping to lock the actors in for a brief period, but insurance issues wouldn’t allow him to do that either. He finally agreed to lock the actors in a student flat for two weeks, and also managed to get the cast onto a nuclear submarine, which amused Boyle – “It was easier for us to get on a nuclear submarine than what it was for an oil rig,”

The crew of the submarine, told cast members about the secret six month missions they are sent on, and the isolation, but what really shocked them was the communication, when the sub crew starts a mission they can receive transmissions, but not send any as they will be detected, so they are given a choice when they launch as to whether they want the communication or not, imagine a call coming through saying your wife or family had been injured or worse and you couldn’t do anything about it, and were 4 months away, it would drive you nuts, on the flip side as Boyle says himself
“Do you want to live with the possibility that you were on a mission for six months and when you get home you get told your wife or kid died five months ago? – Psychologically, the actors loved it.”