Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962) on Netflix
PG19621h 41mAdventureComedyDrama
In 1862, Professor Fergusson is commissioned to race a slave-trading convoy across Africa by balloon and plant the British flag at the Volta River. His crew includes the reporter Donald O'Shay.
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- IMDb5.7/101,521 votes
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Plot summary
In 1862 England, the inventor Professor Fergusson demonstrates his balloon, the Jupiter, whose unicorn-shaped gondola falls during a maiden flight until the pilot Jacques regains control. Funding for an African crossing then collapses when Sir Henry Vining of the Royal Geographic Society and the society's treasurer back out. The American publisher Cornelius Randolph offers to pay if his nephew, the reporter Donald O'Shay, joins, though O'Shay is notorious for playboy antics. Parliament instead orders Fergusson to reach the Volta River before a slave-trading convoy claims the land; he reckons the crossing at five weeks. Sir Henry also comes aboard, declaring himself the expedition's expert on Africa.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Irwin Allen renamed Verne's balloon, called the Victoria in the novel and the Woolner Brothers' rival film, to the Jupiter, and later reused the name for the spaceship Jupiter II in his television series Lost in Space.
- There was a race between two producers to film the story first: Allen and the Woolner Brothers, whose Flight of the Lost Balloon appeared in 1961. Though Verne's novel was in the public domain, Fox and Allen brought legal pressure to make the Woolners drop all mention of Jules Verne.
- Because of the costs of the studio's troubled production of Cleopatra, Five Weeks in a Balloon was the only film being shot on the 20th Century Fox lot at the time.
