Trailer
Plot summary
The USS Montana, an American submarine, meets an unidentified object under the water and goes down near the Cayman Trough. Soviet ships head for the site, and a hurricane moves over the area. The government sends a SEAL team led by Lt. Hiram Coffey to Deep Core, a private experimental drilling platform it wants as a base. Deep Core's designer, Dr. Lindsey Brigman, insists on joining the team even though the rig's foreman is Virgil 'Bud' Brigman, the husband she is separated from. On the first investigation of the wreck, the submersibles lose power, and Lindsey sees a strange light circling her craft. Lt. Coffey is ordered to speed up the mission.
Cast
- Pierce Oliver Brewer, Jr.as Lew Finler
- George Robert Klekas Wilhite
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Abyss (1989)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- James Cameron got the idea for The Abyss at 17, in high school, at a science lecture about deep sea diving by Francis J. Falejczyk, the first human to breathe liquid through his lungs in experiments conducted by Johannes A. Kylstra at Duke University.
- Ed Harris did not actually breathe the fluid: he held his breath inside a helmet full of liquid while being towed 30 feet below the surface, recalling that the worst moments were the fluid rushing up his nose and his eyes swelling up.
- The shoot broke people down: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio had a physical and emotional breakdown on the set, Ed Harris burst into spontaneous sobbing while driving home, and Cameron admitted, "I don't ever want to go through this again".
- Michael Biehn claimed he was in South Carolina for five months and only acted for three to four weeks, and remembered being ten meters underwater when "suddenly the lights went out. It was so black I couldn't see my hand."
- The main tank was based on the abandoned plant's primary reactor containment vessel: 55 feet deep, 209 feet across and holding 7.5 million US gallons of water, at the time the largest fresh-water filtered tank in the world.
- A United Kingdom release for the 4K restoration was canceled due to Cameron's refusal to cut the rat breathing liquid scene, and the film was also pulled from the Disney+ streaming service in the UK for this reason.
- The budget is still disputed: 20th Century Fox stated $43 million, a figure Cameron has reiterated, while The New York Times estimated $45 million, one executive claimed $47 million, and The Numbers lists the production budget at $70 million.
- Cameron and Hurd were married before The Abyss, separated during pre-production and divorced in February 1989, two months after principal photography finished.
