San Andreas is a 2015 American disaster thriller film starring Dwayne Johnson. The film was directed by Brad Peyton and written by Carlton Cuse. Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Ioan Gruffudd, Archie Panjabi and Paul Giamatti also star. Its plot centers on a massive earthquake caused by the San Andreas Fault that devastates the West Coast of the United States.
Principal photography of the film started on April 22, 2014, in Queensland, Australia, and wrapped on July 28 in San Francisco. The film premiered in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on May 26, 2015, and was released by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States on May 29. It received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the visual effects and Johnson and Gugino's performances but criticized the plot and characters. The film grossed $475 million worldwide on a $110 million budget.
Plot A Caltech seismologist, Dr. Lawrence Hayes, and his colleague Dr. Kim Park are at Hoover Dam to test a new earthquake prediction model when a previously unknown nearby fault ruptures and triggers a 7.1 earthquake that collapses the dam. Park sacrifices himself to save a young girl and is swept away by the water.
Hayes discovers that the entire San Andreas Fault is shifting and will soon cause a chain reaction of massive earthquakes that will potentially destroy cities along the fault line. He begins racing to warn the population along with his students Alexi and Phoebe, reporter Serena Johnson, and her cameraman Dylan.
When a 9.1 earthquake devastates Los Angeles, Ray Gaines, a chief rescue helicopter pilot of the Los Angeles Fire Department who is going through a divorce from his wife, Emma, finds himself rescuing her from a skyscraper in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, their daughter Blake has been visiting San Francisco with Emma's new boyfriend, Daniel Riddick, who is a renowned engineer and builder. She meets Ben Taylor, a British engineer seeking employment at Daniel's firm, and Ben's younger brother, Ollie. As Daniel and Blake begin to drive out of the building, a similar magnitude earthquake strikes the city. Rubble from the collapsing parking garage pins her in Daniel's car. Daniel leaves Blake to find help, but then panics and ultimately abandons her in an act of cowardice. Ben and Ollie rescue Blake, take her to Chinatown, and call her parents for help.
Ray and Emma attempt to reach San Francisco in Ray's helicopter but it suffers a gearbox failure, which forces them to make an emergency landing at a shopping mall in Bakersfield. Amid chaos and looting, Ray steals a truck to continue the journey. The pair is waved down by an elderly couple whose car has broken down on the side of the road, stopping them from falling into the San Andreas Fault, which has torn a large fissure through the highway, creating a canyon that now extends into the far distance in both directions. Ray and Emma exchange the truck for a small airplane that the couple owns; as they fly toward San Francisco, they reminisce about their other daughter, Mallory, who drowned several years ago.
As Blake, Ben, and Ollie attempt to reach Nob Hill to signal them after finding their previous meeting point at Coit Tower engulfed in flames, Ray and Emma parachute into AT&T Park just before a 9.6 quake hits, which becomes the largest recorded earthquake in history. As the quake subsides, having destroyed much of the city, Ray and Emma commandeer a boat to reach the group, only to realize that a tsunami is approaching San Francisco Bay. Alongside a handful of other survivors in boats and small ships, they cross the wave before it crests, barely avoiding a container ship caught up in the tsunami wave. The ship crashes into the Golden Gate Bridge's center span, killing everyone on the bridge, including Daniel, who is crushed by a falling shipping container.
The tsunami strikes the already ruined city, capsizing a cruise ship and killing thousands more. Blake, Ben, and Ollie enter the Gate, a building whose construction Daniel had been overseeing, but they are still caught by the tsunami. As the building begins to collapse, trapping Blake underwater, Ray dives in, rescues her, and performs CPR. Emma crashes the boat through a window and drives the five of them out of the collapsing building as Ray resuscitates Blake.
The survivors regroup at a relief camp on the other side of the bay, where the reconciled Ray and Emma talk about their future. On the remains of the Golden Gate Bridge, an American flag unfurls and gives hope that the city will recover and rebuild. Rescue vehicles descend on the destroyed landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area; the San Francisco Peninsula has been turned into an island and San Francisco Bay now extends from San Jose to Santa Cruz.
Cast
Production Development On December 1, 2011, it was announced that New Line Cinema was developing an earthquake disaster film, San Andreas: 3D. from a script by Jeremy Passmore and Andre Fabrizio; Allan Loeb polished the script. On June 5, 2012, the studio set Brad Peyton to direct the film. On July 18, 2012, New Line tapped Carlton Cuse to rewrite the script for the earthquake disaster film. On July 18, 2013, The Conjuring writers Carey Hayes and Chad Hayes were tapped by the studio to rewrite the film again. The film was also produced by New Line and Village Roadshow Pictures, along with Flynn Picture Company and Australian limited Village Roadshow.
Casting On October 14, 2013, Dwayne Johnson closed a deal to star in the film to play the role of a helicopter pilot searching for his daughter after an earthquake. On February 4, 2014, Alexandra Daddario joined the cast. On March 12, 2014, Carla Gugino joined the cast and reunited with Dwayne Johnson with whom she starred in Race to Witch Mountain and Faster. On March 14, 2014, Game of Thrones actor Art Parkinson joined the film's cast. On April 1, 2014, Archie Panjabi joined the earthquake film. On April 5, 2014, Todd Williams also joined the film, to play Marcus Crowlings, an old Army friend of Johnson's character. On April 15, 2014, Colton Haynes was added to the cast of the film. On April 29, Ioan Gruffudd joined the cast of the film. Gruffudd played Daniel Reddick, a wealthy real estate developer who is dating Johnson's character's estranged wife. On May 28, Will Yun Lee joined the cast to play Dr. Kim Park, the co-director of the Caltech Seismology Lab in the film. On June 11, Australian singer and actress Kylie Minogue joined the film to play Gruffudd's sister.
Filming
On December 17, 2013, Variety reported that the film would be shot at Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The production was set to start in April 2014 in Queensland, with locations including Ipswich, various suburban locations across the Gold Coast, and Brisbane. On March 20, 2014, it was announced that Gods of Egypt had started production in Australia, and San Andreas was set to begin soon after. On April 16, 2014, Johnson tweeted photos from the training for the film.
Filming began on April 22, 2014, in Australia and was also shot in the Los Angeles area, Bakersfield, and San Francisco. On May 12, shooting took place in the Lockyer Valley. On May 10–11, shooting was taking place in Los Angeles and then production went back to Australia to complete the rest of shooting. On May 17, second unit was filming scenes in Bakersfield where a helicopter was spotted, and Johnson was busy in Gold Coast. On June 22, the crew was spotted filming disaster scenes on Elizabeth Street in Brisbane.
The film's second-unit started shooting on July 8, in San Francisco, and the first unit began shooting on July 21, wrapping up on July 27. On July 15–16, first unit was filming at Fisherman's Wharf, and a second unit was also filming on the Embarcadero on July 16. On July 21, the filming was taking place at AT&T Park, where the crew shot a scene during a San Francisco Giants game. On July 22, they filmed an earthquake with fake victims and fake garbage at Hyde and Lombard Streets, on Russian Hill. On July 23, crews were filming disaster scenes in The Armory. On July 26, they filmed some scenes near the Fairmont Hotel, with the last day of filming spent shooting on California Street in the Financial District, wrapping up filming on July 27, 2014.
Visual effects The visual effects are provided by Hydraulx, Cinesite and Image Engine and Supervised by Greg and Colin Strause, Holger Voss and Martyn Culpitt with help from Scanline VFX and Method Studios.
Music On July 24, 2014, it was announced that Andrew Lockington would be composing the music for the film.
Three teasers were revealed, and two of them included Robot Koch & Delhia de France and Sia singing "California Dreamin'" by The Mamas and the Papas.Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine:
Release San Andreas premiered on May 26, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. It was initially scheduled for a 2D and 3D release on June 5, 2015, but was later moved up a week. San Andreas was also released in Dolby Vision, making it Warner Bros. Pictures' first film to adopt the format.
Home media San Andreas was released as a digital download, and on Blu-ray and DVD on October 13, 2015. Upon its first week of release on home media in the U.S., the film topped the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert chart, which tracks overall disc sales, and debuted at number 2 at the Blu-ray Disc sales chart with 40% of unit sales coming from Blu-ray. It was blocked by the Diamond Edition Blu-ray Disc edition of the 1992 Disney animated classic Aladdin. As of 2016, it is available in 4K UHD Blu-ray.
Box office San Andreas grossed $155.2 million in the United States and Canada and $319.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $475 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profit as $88.07 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it eighteenth on their list of 2015's "Most Valuable Blockbusters". , the film remained the highest-grossing live-action Hollywood original film .
North America San Andreas opened in North America across 3,777 theaters including a total of 3,200 3D locations. Several days prior to the film's release various box office pundits were predicting a $40 million or more opening in North America. It made $3.1 million from Thursday night showings and $18.2 million on its opening day. It earned $54.5 million in its opening weekend which was well above the tracking and predictions. It was Johnson's biggest opening as a lead actor, surpassing the $36 million debut of his The Scorpion King in 2002 even after adjusting for inflation. Warner Bros. distribution chief Dan Fellman commented about the successful opening, saying that audiences never get tired of disaster films, even going back to The Poseidon Adventure (1972). He added, "What also gets tiring is when you start to do sequels of the same thing. It needs to be fresh, and you have to have the right chemistry in the cast", pointing out the originality of the film, and the performances of Johnson and the other cast, as some of the factors behind the film's successful opening. In its second weekend, it experienced a drop of 52% earning an estimated $26.4 million, falling in second place (behind Spy), but experiencing a smaller fall than that of other disaster movies.
Outside North America