Wolfgang Petersen

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Wolfgang Petersen (14 March 1941 – 12 August 2022) was a German film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. His international breakthrough was the 1981 war film Template:Lang (1981), which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. He subsequently directed the blockbuster fantasy film The NeverEnding Story (1984), based on the novel of the same name.

After moving to the United States in the mid-1980s, Petersen directed his first American production, the science-fiction film Enemy Mine (1985). He directed a variety of major studio productions through the mid-2000s, including In the Line of Fire (1993), Outbreak (1995), Air Force One (1997), The Perfect Storm (2000), Troy (2004), and Poseidon (2006).

In addition to his Oscar nominations, Petersen won three Bambi Awards, a Bavarian Film Award, and a German Film Award. He was also a founding member of the Deutsche Filmakademie.

Early life

Petersen was born on 14 March 1941 in Emden,<ref name="R1" /> the son of a naval officer.<ref name="Brandstetter 2022" /> From 1953 to 1960, Petersen attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg.<ref name="Hamburg 2004" /><ref name="Neue Zürcher Zeitung 2004" />

He made his first films with an 8 mm camera while still at school.<ref name="Brandstetter 2022" /> In the 1960s he was directing plays at Hamburg's Ernst Deutsch Theater.<ref name="NDR.de 2022" /> After studying theater in Berlin and Hamburg, Petersen attended the Film and Television Academy in Berlin (1966–1970).<ref name="DFFB Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin 2015" />

Career

Petersen's first productions were for German television, and it was during his work on the popular German Tatort (Crime Scene) TV series that he first met and worked with the actor Jürgen Prochnow<ref name="Erstes Deutsches Fernsehen (ARD) 2016" /> — who would later appear as the U-boat captain in Petersen's famous Template:Lang. The most famous of his Tatort episodes is Reifezeugnis (Maturity Certificate) from 1977 with the young Nastassja Kinski.<ref name="DER SPIEGEL 2022" /> He shot 6 Tatort episodes.<ref name="NDR.de 2022_2" />

Petersen made his first theatrical feature film in 1974, the psychological thriller One or the Other of Us, based on the novel Einer von uns beiden by Horst Bosetzky and published anonymously under his pseudonym and starring Jürgen Prochnow.<ref name="tagesschau.de 2022" /> He next directed the 1977 film Die Konsequenz, a black/white adaptation of Alexander Ziegler's autobiographical novel of homosexual love.<ref name="tagesschau.de 2022" /> In its time, the film was considered so radical that when first broadcast in Germany, the Bavarian network Bayerischer Rundfunk turned off the transmitters rather than broadcast it.<ref name="web.ard.de" />

His next feature was the World War II epic Template:Lang, released in early 1982.<ref name="GmbH 2022" /> The film chronicles the experiences of a German submarine crew engaged in the "Battle of the Atlantic".<ref name="Fakultät für Informatik - OvGU Magdeburg Fakultät für Informatik"/> Though not an immediate financial success, the film received highly positive reviews and was nominated for six Academy Awards, two of which (for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay) went to Petersen;<ref name="Smith 2022" /> he was also nominated for a BAFTA Award and DGA Award.<ref name="AllMovie" /> The film starred Jürgen Prochnow as the U-boat Captain,<ref name="Arts 2022" /> who became a good example of Petersen's action characters, a man at war who confronts danger and fate at sea.

File:Stanley O'Toole, Dennis Quaid, Wolfgang Petersen.jpg

From left to right: Stanley O'Toole, Dennis Quaid and Petersen in 1984

After The NeverEnding Story (1984),<ref name="Michael Ende 2011" /> Petersen's first English-language film, he directed Enemy Mine (1985),<ref name="DER SPIEGEL 1985" /><ref name="Smith 2022" /> which was not a critical or box office success. He hit his stride in 1993 with the assassination thriller In the Line of Fire.<ref name="Coyle 2022" /> Starring Clint Eastwood as an angst-ridden presidential Secret Service guard,<ref name="Coyle 2022" /> In the Line of Fire gave Petersen the box office clout he needed to direct another suspense thriller, Outbreak (1995), starring Dustin Hoffman.<ref name="FILMSTARTS.de 1995" /> The 1997 Petersen blockbuster Air Force One did very well at the box office, with generally positive critical reviews from movie critics. For both Air Force One and Outbreak, Petersen teamed up with the German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus,<ref name="B.Z. – Die Stimme Berlins 2017" /> who has also worked frequently with director Martin Scorsese.<ref name="GmbH 1970" />

File:Wolfgang Petersen.jpg

Petersen at the filming location of Air Force One

By 1998, Petersen was an established Hollywood director, with the power to both re-release his classic Template:Lang in a new director's cut and to helm star-studded action-thrillers. As such, he was originally considered to direct the first movie in the Harry Potter film series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Petersen pulled out of the running in March 2000.<ref name="R2" />

In the 2000s, Petersen continued to direct two summer blockbusters, the films The Perfect Storm (2000) and Troy (2004). The success of the former helped his Radiant Productions company to sign a deal with Warner Bros.<ref name="R3" />

File:Wolfgang Petersen - Boulevard der Stars.jpg

Petersen, Boulevard der Stars, Berlin

Petersen's $160 million epic film Poseidon, a re-telling of the 1969 Paul Gallico novel The Poseidon Adventure (previously adapted for the 1972 disaster film), was released by Warner Bros. in May 2006. The film performed poorly in the U.S., barely exceeding $60 million in domestic box office receipts by early August, but international sales surpassed $121 million.<ref name="Duffy 2022" />

Although hired to direct the film adaptation of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card that was scheduled for release in 2008, he later "moved on"<ref name="R4" /> from the project. His potential projects included a live-action adaptation of the 2006 anime film Paprika<ref name="R5" /> and a film adaptation of the science fiction novel Old Man's War.<ref name="R6" />

After a ten-year hiatus, Petersen returned in 2016 as director of the heist comedy Vier gegen die Bank, his first German-language film since Template:Lang in 1981.<ref name="R7" />

Personal life

Petersen's first marriage was with actress Template:Interlanguage link;<ref name="DER SPIEGEL 2022" /> they had a son.<ref name="Mouriquand 2022" /><ref name="Smith 2022" /> In 1978, he married his assistant Maria Borgel.<ref name="DER SPIEGEL 2022" /> Petersen moved to Los Angeles in 1986<ref name="DER SPIEGEL 2022" /> and subsequently acquired American citizenship.<ref name="DER SPIEGEL 2022" />

Death

Petersen died of pancreatic cancer on 12 August 2022, at the age of 81, at his home in Brentwood, Los Angeles.<ref name="R8" /><ref name="R9" />

Filmography

Source:<ref name="KG 2022" /><ref name="filmportal.de 1941" />

Short film

Year	Title	Director	Writer
1968	Die rote Fahne	Template:Yes	Template:No
1969	Ich nicht	Template:Yes	Template:Yes
	Der Eine, der Andere	Template:Yes	Template:Yes

Feature film

Year	Title	Director	Producer	Writer
1974	One or the Other of Us	Template:Yes	Template:No	Template:No
1981	Template:Lang	Template:Yes	Template:No	Template:Yes
1984	The NeverEnding Story	Template:Yes	Template:No	Template:Yes
1985	Enemy Mine	Template:Yes	Template:No	Template:No
1991	Shattered	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Template:Yes
1993	In the Line of Fire	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Template:No
1995	Outbreak	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Template:No
1997	Air Force One	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Template:No
2000	The Perfect Storm	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Template:No
2004	Troy	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Template:No
2006	Poseidon	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Template:No
2016	Vier gegen die Bank	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Template:No

Television

TV movies

Year	Title	Director	Writer
1965	Stadt auf Stelzen	Template:Yes	Template:No
1972	Anna und Totò	Template:Yes	Template:No
1973	Template:Interlanguage link	Template:Yes	Template:No
	Template:Interlanguage link	Template:Yes	Template:No
1974	Aufs Kreuz gelegt	Template:Yes	Template:No
1975	Template:Interlanguage link	Template:Yes	Template:No
	Stellenweise Glatteis	Template:Yes	Template:No
1976	Template:Ill	Template:Yes	Template:No
	Vier gegen die Bank	Template:Yes	Template:No
1977	Template:Ill	Template:Yes	Template:Yes
	Die Konsequenz	Template:Yes	Template:Yes
1978	Schwarz und weiß wie Tage und Nächte	Template:Yes	Template:No

TV series

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Executive producer	Notes
1971–1977	Tatort	Template:Yes	Template:Yes	Template:No	Directed 6 episodes; Wrote 2 episodes
2001–2003	The Agency	Template:No	Template:No	Template:Yes	4 episodes

Critical reception

Year	Film	Rotten Tomatoes	Ref.
1981	Template:Lang	98%	<ref name="R10" />
1984	The NeverEnding Story	81%	<ref name="R11" />
1985	Enemy Mine	61%	<ref name="R12" />
1991	Shattered	31%	<ref name="R13" />
1993	In the Line of Fire	96%	<ref name="R14" />
1995	Outbreak	60%	<ref name="R15" />
1997	Air Force One	76%	<ref name="R16" />
2000	The Perfect Storm	47%	<ref name="R17" />
2004	Troy	54%	<ref name="R18" />
2006	Poseidon	33%	<ref name="R19" />

External links

• Template:IMDb name
• Template:Discogs artist
• Wolfgang Petersen at Find a Grave