Lionsgate’s Moonfall is scheduled to make its debut later this week on February 4. Directed by Roland Emmerich, the film stars Oscar-winner Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson (Midway, The Conjuring films), and John Bradley (Game of Thrones).
“In the film, a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it,” reads the synopsis. “With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler is convinced she has the key to saving us all – but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper and a conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman believes her. These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is.
ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim spoke with Moonfall star Patrick Wilson about his character Brian Harper, reuniting with Emmerich, and more.
Jonathan Sim: So your character of Brian Harper is this guy who separated from his family, he can’t pay the rent, and all of a sudden he has to go and save the world. What was it like to play Harper? And what qualities about this character made you want to take on this role?
Patrick Wilson: Well, let’s see. I always like a journey of a guy going from zero to at least six or seven [laughs]. I don’t work in this space a lot of sci-fi, so that was fun. There were a lot of new opportunities for me that I felt like would be a nice change, but ultimately, the fact that we were just able to make the movie during 2020 when a lot of movies weren’t being made, we all felt very fortunate to just be working.
This is definitely a great movie for people to come back and watch, especially after everything that’s gone on. Now you previously worked with Roland Emmerich on the movie Midway. What is it about your actor/director relationship that made you want to work with him again on Moonfall?
Well, we had a great time working together on Midway. A lot of times for me, you want the script, you want the role to be good, but, if you get along with the director, that’s…you’re putting a lot of faith in them, right? And so like anybody, you want your coworkers to be people that you support, that you like, that you get along with [laughs], and that do good work, and that have the same passion that you do for your job, they do for theirs. And Roland is certainly that person. He has such an incredible passion for filmmaking, especially for making movies like this, that can be so huge and bombastic, it was a different opportunity for me. So I was happy to go along for the ride. Certainly, after doing our World War II movie, this was a much different feel than Midway.
You’ve had this incredible career behind you with all these amazing movies. So besides Harper, which character out of all the ones you played do you think would do the best at stopping the moon from hitting Earth?
[laughs] Lou Solverson from Fargo. He’s pretty rock solid. Although Ed Warren, if he could figure out his way how to fly a shuttle, he’d probably be pretty good too, but I’d take Lou because he was a vet, a Navy vet. He’d do well.
