K-19: The Widowmaker - Production

Production

"The Widowmaker" nickname was used only in the movie. In real life the submarine had no nickname until the nuclear accident on 5 July 1961, when she got her actual nickname "Hiroshima". Producers later admitted that the movie title was "one of their biggest mistakes."

The producers made some efforts to work with the original crew of K-19, who took exception to the first version of the script available to them. The submarine's captain presented an open letter to the actors and production team, and a group of officers and crew-members presented another. In a later script, several scenes were cut, and the names of the crew changed at the request of the crew-members and their families.

The most significant difference between the plot and the historical events is the scene that replaces an incident where the captain threw almost all the submarine's small arms overboard out of concern about the possibility of a mutiny; the film instead portrays an actual attempt at mutiny.

The Hotel-class submarine K-19 was portrayed in the film by the Juliett-class K-77, which was significantly modified for the role. Her Majesty's Canadian Submarine Ojibwa portrayed the Soviet Whiskey-class submarine S-270. HMCS Terra Nova portrayed the USS Decatur. The Canadian Halifax Shipyards stood in for the Sevmash shipyard of northern Russia.

Klaus Badelt wrote the film's late-Romantic styled score.

Read more about this topic:  K-19: The Widowmaker

Famous quotes containing the word production:

    I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
    Karl Marx (1818–1883)

    The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.
    Debbie Taylor (20th century)