Trailer
Plot summary
In the 2020s, robot boxing has replaced fights between people. Charlie Kenton, a former boxer, tours with his robot Ambush until a bull belonging to promoter Ricky destroys it. Charlie had bet money he did not have and slips away before Ricky can collect. He then learns that his ex-girlfriend has died, leaving their eleven-year-old son Max, whom he has not seen since birth. Max's aunt Debra and her husband Marvin want custody. Charlie agrees to give up the boy for money and keeps him for three months during the couple's vacation. At a gym run by Bailey Tallet, Charlie buys the famous robot Noisy Boy, which is wrecked in an underworld bout. Searching a junkyard, Max finds Atom, an obsolete sparring robot with a shadow function that copies movements.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Real Steel (2011)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Jason Matthews of Legacy Effects, successor to Stan Winston Studios, turned production designer Tom Meyer's robot designs into practical animatronic props: "We have 26-and-a-half total live-action robots that were made for this film. They all have hydraulic neck controls. Atom has RC hands as well."
- Shawn Levy said simulcam let the crew capture live human fighters and see them converted to CGI robots on a screen instantaneously, putting the robots in the ring in real time, whereas a few years earlier they would have been operating to empty frames and guessing at how it would look.
- Boxing hall-of-famer Sugar Ray Leonard was an adviser for the fight scenes and gave Hugh Jackman boxing lessons so his moves would be more natural.
- The original screenplay was written by Dan Gilroy and purchased by DreamWorks for $850,000; Shawn Levy was attached to the project in September 2009, and Hugh Jackman was cast in the starring role that November for a $9 million fee.
- The film is based on "Steel", a short story by Richard Matheson originally published in the May 1956 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which had already been adapted once before, into a 1963 Twilight Zone episode.
