Trailer
Plot summary
During the Great Depression, Paul Edgecomb oversees the death row block at Cold Mountain Penitentiary, a hallway the inmates call the Green Mile. His fellow guards are Brutus Howell, Dean Stanton, Harry Terwilliger, and Percy Wetmore, a cruel man whose political connections protect him. A new prisoner arrives: John Coffey, a hulking but gentle and simple-minded black man convicted of murdering two white girls. He was found cradling their bodies and said only that he tried to take it back. John seems childlike and afraid of the dark. Paul reads the file on the new prisoner. Another inmate, Eduard Delacroix, cares for a mouse he names Mr. Jingles.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Green Mile (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In the United Kingdom the distributors wanted a 15 certificate, but the BBFC gave the film an 18, their strictest mainstream certificate, citing its "strong horror"; BBFC director Robin Duval said: "We can't give in. If we did, we would not be seen as independent."
- Hanks was originally supposed to play elderly Paul Edgecomb as well, but the makeup tests did not make him look credible enough to be an elderly man, so Dabbs Greer was hired to play the older Edgecomb in his final film role.
- Michael Clarke Duncan credited his casting to Bruce Willis, with whom he had worked on the film Armageddon one year earlier; according to Duncan, Willis introduced him to Darabont after hearing of the open call for John Coffey.
- Basketball player Shaquille O'Neal has stated that he turned down the role of John Coffey, and Josh Brolin was considered for the role of William "Wild Bill" Wharton.
- Tom Hanks and Darabont met at an Academy Award luncheon in 1994, and Stephen King stated that he had envisioned Hanks in the role and was happy when Darabont mentioned his name.
- Frank Darabont adapted Stephen King's novel into a screenplay in under eight weeks, and the film was shot at Warner Hollywood Studios in West Hollywood and on location in Shelbyville, Tennessee, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and the old Tennessee State Prison.
