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
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