Trailer
Plot summary
David escapes a disappointing life by watching Pleasantville, a black-and-white sitcom from the 1950s built around the Parker family, where nothing ever goes wrong. His twin sister Jennifer has other interests, and the two fight over the television until the set and the remote both break. A repairman appears with a replacement remote and, impressed by what David knows about the show, hands it over. Using it drops them inside the Parkers' house, where George and Betty take them for their own children, Bud and Mary Sue. In town, fire will not start and every road leads back. David resolves to play his part and keep the show intact, while Jennifer goes her own way, agreeing to a date with Mary Sue's boyfriend, Skip Martin.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Pleasantville (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Camera operator Brent Hershman died in a car crash after falling asleep driving home from a 19-hour workday on set, a death that led crew members to launch an unsuccessful petition for Brent's Rule, which would have capped workdays at 14 hours.
- Pleasantville was the first feature film created by scanning and digitizing recorded footage to selectively remove color, with roughly 163,000 frames of 35mm footage scanned in Los Angeles using a Spirit DataCine and a MegaDef Colour Correction System.
- For the film's 2026 Shout! Factory Ultra HD Blu-ray release, director Gary Ross chose to edit out a line of dialogue spoken by Reese Witherspoon at the end of the film.
- The film is dedicated to camera operator Brent Hershman, to director Gary Ross's mother and to actor J. T. Walsh, all of whom died before it was released.
- Filmmaker Jon M. Chu cited Pleasantville, alongside The Truman Show, as an influence on how the Land of Oz is thematically portrayed in his two-part film adaptation of the musical Wicked.
