Wolfgang Petersen, Air Force One & Das Boot Director, Dies

Two-time Oscar nominee Wolfgang Petersen, Air Force One and Das Boot director, has died at the age of 81. Born in Germany in 1941, Petersen made his feature film debut with the psychological thriller One or the Other of Us starring Jürgen Prochnow, which was perceived as controversial at the time but also received largely positive reviews from critics. Petersen would follow it up with one of his most celebrated films to date in Das Boot about the crew of a German submarine during World War II’s Battle of the Atlantic, which scored six Oscar nominations, including two for Petersen for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

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Thanks to his first two films’ success, Petersen would make his English-language leap with 1984’s The NeverEnding Story, an adaptation of the fantasy novel of the same name that received generally positive reviews and was a box office success. Petersen would follow it up with the Dennis Quaid-starring Enemy Mine, which was a critical and commercial disappointment, but has gone on to garner a cult following. After briefly returning to his psychological thriller roots for Shattered, which scored generally negative reviews from critics, Petersen would become a go-to director for Hollywood blockbusters, with the likes of Harrison Ford’s Air Force One, In the Line of Fire and Outbreak.

Related: Contagion: What The Movie Got Right & Wrong Compared To Coronavirus

Deadline has brought word that Wolfgang Petersen, the acclaimed director of Air Force One and Das Boot, has died at the age of 81. The two-time Oscar nominee is said to have passed away peacefully at his Brentwood home this past Friday from his battle with pancreatic cancer, dying in the arms of his wife of 50 years, Maria Antoinette. A funeral service will be held for Petersen, though will be held privately.

Though Steven Spielberg is best known for launching the summer blockbuster with Jaws, Petersen is one of the better-known names in the genre for his work on Clint Eastwood’s In the Line of Fire, 1995’s Outbreak and Air Force One. Interestingly, Outbreak enjoyed a surge of popularity around the world alongside Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion in the early days of COVID lockdown, with the former becoming the fourth-most-streamed film on Netflix in 2020 while the latter became the most-viewed film on HBO Now and was the seventh-most-popular film on iTunes by March 2020. With his major status in Hollywood, Petersen had been attached or considered to direct a number of major productions throughout his career, including being in the running for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as well as eyeing adaptations of Ender’s Game and Paprika, though would move on from the former due to creative differences.

With the turn of the new milennia, Wolfgang Petersen’s output gradually slowed, being at the helm for the disaster thrillers Poseidon and The Perfect Storm as well as the historical epic Troy, the latter two which were box office hits in spite of their mixed reviews, while the former cost Warner Bros. a reported $77 million in losses. Petersen would briefly return to direct the German-language Four Against the Bank, his second adaptation of The Nixon Recession Caper after the 1976 TV film of the same name, before unofficially retiring. Audiences can revisit much of Petersen’s work available to stream on HBO Max, Netflix and Hulu now.

Source: Deadline

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