I watched Pawn Sacrifice last night. Beautiful movie, well acted. By the end, it was both beautiful and sad due to the deterioration of Fischer’s mental health. Overall, I thought Toby Maguire put his heart into the role.
I have no idea how close the movie is to the truth. I watched “Bobby Fischer Against the World” documentary and the movie didn’t touch on the fact that Bobby sorta isolated himself and did training for some months before the match. But most movies of that type take some artistic leeway in order to make for a more compelling movie.
No idea if Fischer’s mental health was described accurately or not. The movie mentioned at the end that his mental health did continue to decline after the match. Otherwise, I thought it was a well done movie, and they did seem to make an effort to be at least somewhat accurate in the various things he was doing and how Bobby lived.
One “chessic” stretch I did notice was that Fischer’s Game 3 opening choice of the Modern Benoni was a supposedly a “surprise”. While he employed it less often than the King’s Indian, Gruenfeld, or Nimzo-Indian, there was no question that it was in his arsenal. In fact, Fischer played the Modern Benoni THREE times in the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal (1970): Versus no less than Portisch, Uhlmann, and Gligoric.
The movie did correctly note that the bombshell TN was 11…Nh5!?
Here are the latest box office figures: boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id … rifice.htm
Not sure where it stands in DVD and rentals, but it looks like they didn’t come near making back the productions costs. I agree that TM gave a good performance as did Peter Sarsgaard as Lombardy.
It’s on Amazon Prime currently. Hard to say how much a movie might eventually make over time, even if there isn’t a real demand for DVD or Blu-rays. With online streaming, it gives movies a way to make some money with little outlay. Plus I think in general, well done movies based on real events tend to have more staying power in the streaming industry. Not sure how many people would want to actually buy the DVD/Blu-ray of Pawn Sacrifice, but I’d think many might watch it once out of curiosity if it bubbled up while browsing movies on a streaming service.
Production costs for the film have not been released. As to non-streaming video, DVD and Blu-ray, $812,830 domestic has been reported. the-numbers.com/movie/Pawn-S … ideo-sales
Not really sure why we’re debating how much the film costs or it’s gross revenue. Seems that has little to do with chess or the story of Fischer’s life. (Or at least, a decent movie approximation of how it played out.)
Not really debating. Just looking at the facts of the market as to doing a major project on Fischer as a feature film topic. Several of the more recent documentaries have been very interesting particularly one from Serbia, Requiem for Bobby Fischer youtube.com/watch?v=d9jX0DVbTc4
Not to be confused with A Requiem for Bobby Fischer.