20th Century Fox Unveils Breathtaking ‘The Mountain Between Us’ Footage

While 20th Century Fox had several press outlets in London for a War for the Planet of the Apes junket, the studio decided to offer a delightful unveiling of footage from their upcoming The Mountain Between Us.

With the only other footage having been shown at CinemaCon in Las Vegas earlier this year, President of Fox 2000 Elizabeth Gabriel was eager to introduce 20 minutes of the film which was actually shot on top of mountains, in the snow, and under weather dependent circumstances. While Gabriel was quick to point out the footage was “not finished from any standpoint,” the fact was easily overlooked when Kate Winslet and Idris Elba took the screen.

The Mountain Between Us follows Alex (Winslet) and Ben (Elba) as they rush to the eastern coast of the United States for different reasons. She has her wedding to get to, having been in Utah to photograph a neo-Nazi event, while he is needed in Baltimore for emergency surgery on a young boy. However, an impending storm has grounded all flights which prompts Alex to take initiative and find an independent pilot who can get them to another airport — in part because she wants to get to her own wedding but with a touch of feeling like she needs to impress her soon-to-be husband with problem-solving skills.

It’s all well and good, the two characters play wonderfully off of one another as they board the tiny little aircraft. Then, the unthinkable becomes reality as the pilot suffers from a stroke and an intimate and terrifying plane crash sequences puts the characters in the middle of Utah mountains with no civilization in sight.

“The idea of two people, that don’t know each and landed up in the mountains, just snow around them, I felt this is a great play,” director Hany Abu-Assad said. Reading the script actually gave him a cold feeling because of the characters’ detailed struggle, which prompted his decision to film this project in an actual setting rather than on stages. In fact, the locations were so cold, the crew could not turn the cameras off all day. “The moment they are not on anymore, it’s so cold, you can’t make the camera work again,” Abu-Assad said. “So, the cameras were working all day and night.”

For Winslet, however, this was no strange adventure.

“I did Titanic, dude,” Winslet joked, when asked about the intense weather conditions. “Falls through ice? No problem! Plane crash? Boat sinks! No biggie!”

“There was a Titanic memory at least once a day.”

It certainly wasn’t the weather which drew Winslet to this film which – if the rest of the film matches the quality of the 20 minutes shown – should be a topic of conversation come award season. “What I was struck by by Hany as filmmaker, was he always tells such a simple tale that has so much complexity but real emotion under surface,” Winslet said. “This great love story of survival, there was something about the enormity of that challenge that was completely irresistible to me.”

UP NEXT: ‘Dark Tower’ Isn’t Exact Adaptation Of Stephen King’s Book

Abu-Assad was particularly interested in the dynamic between the characters, one of whom is British and the other American as to keep things from getting “boring.”

“If you get to know people better, you have more trust in yourself and to others,” Abu-Assad said. “So, actually, the movie is about how your life depend on a stranger when there is nobody else to depend on. It’s a great theme. I think the true theme of the movie is about trusting a stranger in order to survive.”

What might be most interesting is how this story will evolve into a romantic tale. Both characters are lugging extra baggage around with them, Elba’s Ben having been married and possible still while Winslet’s Alex is attempting to walk the aisle at her own wedding. “If these two characters hadn’t had moments of intimacy, how would they have had the emotional strength to survive and to stay alive?” Winslet points out. “Days go by when they don’t eat anything and they have to stick together, keep the morale up. I think it’s very unexpected how they gradually start to fall in love.”

“It feels really far away, the idea, that this couple might actually fall in love,” Winslet said. “They both have baggage. They both have situations back home. They break each other down, emotionally, in a way.”

The Mountain Between Us hits theaters October 6, 2017.