Anticipation is building for “Sully,” the movie starring Tom Hanks as Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the U.S. Airways pilot who safely landed a plane on the Hudson River after a flock of geese took out its jets in 2009.
He was heralded as a hero.
“Sully paid the cost for that heroic act,” says Hanks.
We all remember the gripping news reports as the plane, which had just taken off from New York bound for North Carolina, was forced to drop down into the icy January waters.
“It was a day like literally 10,000 other days — until it wasn’t,” Sullenberger told Newsweek last year. “I had been flying airplanes for 42 years, and in all that time I never knew when or even if I would be faced with some ultimate challenge.”
As the pilot was praised for his decision, a full-scale National Transportation Safety Board investigation was underway to determine if Sully had done the right thing.
“The investigative board was trying to paint a picture that he had done the wrong thing,” says Clint Eastwood, the 86-year-old director of “Sully,” in a new featurette for the film.
“Sully paid the cost for that heroic act,” says Hanks.
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“It’s a very interesting and compelling part of the story,” says Aaron Eckhart, who plays Sullenberg’s co-pilot Jeff Skiles.
For a long time after the incident, Sullenberger was haunted by his decision, he said in the Newsweek interview.
“One of the biggest problems was getting my sleep to return to normal. My blood pressure and pulse were so elevated — even under a doctor’s care — for about 10 weeks. For the first few days, I couldn’t sleep more than an hour at a time, and I couldn’t shut my brain off — all of the distracted thinking and the second-guessing, especially late at night.”
He added, “I knew that during the investigation they would be analyzing everything we did. We weren’t certain for many months after the investigation that we really had made the right decisions at every juncture and would ultimately be vindicated. Most people don’t understand that part of the story.”
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And that’s a big part of the story being brought to life in “Sully,” Eastwood’s first feature film since his 2014 smash hit, “American Sniper.” That movie garnered six Oscar nominations and was the biggest box office hit of Eastwood’s directorial career, pulling in $547.4 million worldwide.
Last year, Sullenberger gave his stamp of approval to the movie, which opens Sept. 9, calling the filmmaking group a “dream team.”
Over the weekend, Hanks participated in an IMBD.com chat on Twitter. One of his questions was: How did this role differ from others? His answer was, “Two words: white hair.”
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