Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story (2005) on Netflix
Horse trainer Ben Crane brings his daughter Cale to the track, where the mare Soñador breaks a foreleg. Ben takes the injured horse home rather than let the owner destroy her.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Ben Crane trains racehorses in Lexington, Kentucky, and the family's own barn has stood empty for years through financial trouble. He brings his daughter Cale along to the track, where the mare Soñador refuses to leave her stall. Ben feels heat in one of her legs, but Palmer, the owner, orders the horse onto the track. In the race Soñador breaks a foreleg, and Palmer wants her put down. Ben accepts the wounded mare in place of three months of salary and loses his job. He brings Soñador home and has her leg put in a cast. Cale slips out at night to visit Soñador, and she also visits her grandfather Pop, who enjoys teaching her about horses. With no work and the property facing foreclosure, Ben decides to breed Soñador.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story (2005)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film is loosely inspired by the mare Mariah's Storm, a promising filly pointed towards the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies in 1993 who then broke her cannon bone, recovered to win some graded stakes races, and is now known mostly as the dam of Giant's Causeway.
- The role of Cale Crane was originally written for a boy and was changed specifically so that Fanning could play it; the first script sent to her still had the word "boy" in the character description.
- While doing research in Kentucky, the film's writer-director met a vet who told him about a racehorse that made a miraculous comeback after a serious injury, and loosely based the script on that story; after four years of searching and an initial studio rejection, DreamWorks picked it up.
- After filming wrapped, Kurt Russell bought his young co-star Dakota Fanning a real Palomino horse of her own, which she named Goldie.
- The stallions named in the Ashford Stud scene, such as Fusaichi Pegasus, Giant's Causeway, Johannesburg and Grand Slam, are real horses who actually stand at Ashford, but the actual stallions were not used in filming and stand-ins were placed in their stalls instead.
