Trailer
Plot summary
In the year 507, a man-like ogre called Grendel comes to the mead hall Heorot during a celebration and kills King Hrothgar's people. The Geatish warrior Beowulf travels with a band of soldiers to Denmark to slay the creature. Beowulf is attracted to Hrothgar's wife, the queen Wealtheow. To lure Grendel out, the men celebrate loudly inside the hall. Beowulf strips naked so that the fight will be fair and equal, and he relaxes while they make the noise. Wiglaf, his closest friend, and the rest of the band stay with him. Grendel arrives, and the two of them fight.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Beowulf (2007)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Angelina Jolie, the voice of Grendel's mother, filmed her role over two days while she was three months pregnant, and said the character's nude human form startled her and that she was surprised at how exposed she felt in an animated film.
- When the budget expanded, director Robert Zemeckis told the screenwriters to rewrite their script, saying there was nothing they could write that would cost him more than a million dollars a minute to film, and the dragon fight became a battle spanning the cliffs and the sea.
- Screenwriter Roger Avary wanted a small-scale, gritty Beowulf with a budget of $15-20 million, like Jabberwocky or Excalibur; the project went into turnaround after the option expired and the rights returned to him, and he went on to direct an adaptation of The Rules of Attraction.
- Beowulf's performances were captured on a 25 × 35-foot stage rigged with 244 Vicon MX40 cameras, with the actors wearing seventy eight body markers.
- More than 450 graphic designers worked on Beowulf, the largest team ever assembled for a Sony Pictures Imageworks-produced movie as of 2007.
- Robert Zemeckis wanted the character Beowulf to resemble depictions of Jesus, believing a correlation could be made between Christ's face and a universally accepted appeal, and he used Alan Ritchson as the body model for the title character.
- Roger Avary came up with the idea of Beowulf fighting Grendel naked as a reference to Richard Corben's comic book Den, and the scene also took inspiration from legendary berserkers, who were said to fight in battles while naked.
- Robert Zemeckis cast Ray Winstone as Beowulf after seeing the actor play the title role in the 2003 ITV serial Henry VIII.
