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Plot summary
Chris Nielsen is a pediatrician. He meets Annie Collins, a painter, on a trip to Switzerland, and they marry. They have a son, Ian, and a daughter, Marie; a car crash kills both children. Four years afterward another crash kills Chris. He does not understand that he is dead, so he remains on Earth as a ghost while Annie grieves. A presence warns him that any contact would only deepen her sorrow. He wakes in a heaven of mountains that resemble one of her paintings, the place the two meant to grow old in.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about What Dreams May Come (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Ennio Morricone had completed and recorded a full score for the film, but after editorial changes his score was rejected and Kamen was hired in his place; short on time, Kamen adapted "Beside You" from his band the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble's 1971 album as the main theme.
- The original prints of the film were lost in a fire at Universal Studios' backlot on June 1, 2008; a worldwide search was launched for a copy, and one was found in Europe.
- Part of the "Hell" sequence was filmed on the decrepit hull of the Essex class aircraft carrier USS Oriskany while berthed at Mare Island in Vallejo, California.
- The visual effects were created by Mass. Illusions, the same group that developed the bullet time visual effects for The Matrix.
- Richard Matheson, author of the source novel, wrote in an introductory note that only the characters are fictional and that almost everything else is based on research, the book including an extensive bibliography.
- Richard Matheson said of the adaptation: "I will not comment on What Dreams May Come except to say that a major producer in Hollywood said to me, 'They should have shot your book.' Amen."
SPOILER
An alternate ending follows the novel: Chris is reincarnated as a boy in Philadelphia and Annie as a girl in Sri Lanka, her new incarnation dying young to atone for killing herself, before the two are again reunited in Heaven.
