Knowing (stylized as KNOW1NG) is a 2009 science fiction thriller film directed and co-produced by Alex Proyas and starring Nicolas Cage. The film, conceived and co-written by Ryne Douglas Pearson, was originally attached to a number of directors under Columbia Pictures, but it was placed in turnaround and eventually picked up by Escape Artists. Production was financially backed by Summit Entertainment. Knowing was filmed in Docklands Studios Melbourne, Australia, using various locations to represent the film's Boston-area setting. The film centers on the discovery of a strange paper filled with numbers and the possibility that they somehow predict the details of various disasters. Knowing was released on March 20, 2009, in the United States, while the DVD and Blu-ray media were released on July 7. The film grossed $186.5 million at the worldwide box office, plus $27.7 million with home video sales, against a production budget of $50 million, but was met with mixed-to-negative reviews, with praise for the acting performances, visual style and atmosphere, and criticism over some implausibilities and the ending.
Plot In October 1959, an elementary school in Lexington celebrates its opening with a competition in which students draw what they believe will happen in the future. Lucinda Embry fills her paper with numbers while being guided by whispering voices. Her teacher, Miss Taylor, collects the drawing before she can write the final numbers. During the ceremony, Lucinda engraves the remaining numbers into a closet door with her fingernails. The works are stored in a time capsule and opened 50 years later. In 2009, Lucinda's paper is given to Caleb Koestler, the 9-year-old son of widowed MIT astrophysics professor John Koestler. John discovers that Lucinda's numbers are dates, death tolls, and geographical coordinates of major disasters over the past 50 years, including the Oklahoma City bombing, September 11 attacks, and Hurricane Katrina, as well as three more yet to happen. He visits Miss Taylor who, despite showing signs of Alzheimer's, tells him of the scratching on the door left by Lucinda. The next day, John leaves to pick up his son where he witnesses a plane crash that takes 81 lives and realizes that it was the first future event on the list. John becomes convinced that his family has a significant role in these incidents: his wife died in an earlier event, while Caleb received Lucinda's message. Caleb begins hearing the same whispering voices as Lucinda. John locates Lucinda's daughter Diana and her granddaughter Abby in New York, where he witnesses a train derailment caused by a faulty siding. He requests their help in preventing the final event. Diana goes with him to Lucinda's abandoned mobile home. They find a copy of Matthäus Merian's engraving of Ezekiel's "chariot vision", in which a great Sun is represented. They also discover that the final two digits of Lucinda's message are not numbers but two reversed letter E's, matching the message left by Lucinda under her bed: "Everyone Else," implying an extinction-level event. Caleb and Abby, who were left asleep in the car, have an encounter with the beings who are the source of the whispers. Diana tells John that her mother had always told her the date she would die.
The next day, Abby colors in the Sun on the engraving, which gives John a revelation. He rushes to the MIT observatory and learns that a massive solar flare with the potential to destroy all life will strike the Earth on the last date indicated by the message. As Diana and Abby prepare to take refuge in nearby caves, John goes to the school and finds the door on which Lucinda engraved the final numbers. He identifies them as coordinates of a place where he believes they may find salvation from the solar flare. After John reveals that the caves will not protect them, the skeptical and now frantic Diana loads Caleb and Abby into her car and flees. At a gas station, the whispering beings steal Diana's car with Caleb and Abby. Diana pursues them in a stolen SUV but is killed in a crash, dying at midnight on October 19 as Lucinda had predicted. The beings take Caleb and Abby to Lucinda's mobile home, where John encounters them. The beings, acting as extraterrestrial angels, are leading children to safety on interstellar arks. John is told he cannot go with them because he never heard the whispering, so he convinces a grief-stricken Caleb to leave with Abby. The two are taken away and the ark, along with many others, leaves the Earth. The following morning, John decides to be with his family when the flare strikes and drives to his parents' house, where he reconciles with his estranged father. The solar flare vaporizes New York City, then destroys the Earth. The ark deposits Caleb and Abby on another planet resembling an earthly paradise and departs, as do other arks. The two run through a field towards a large white mysterious tree resembling the tree of life.
Cast
Production
Development
In 2001, novelist Ryne Douglas Pearson approached producers Todd Black and Jason Blumenthal with his idea for a film, where a time capsule from the 1950s is opened revealing fulfilled prophecies, of which the last one ended with 'EE' – "everyone else". The producers liked the concept and bought his script. The project was set up at Columbia Pictures. Both Rod Lurie and Richard Kelly were attached as directors, but the film eventually went into turnaround. The project was picked up by the production company Escape Artists, and the script was rewritten by Stiles White and Juliet Snowden. Director Alex Proyas was attached to direct the project in February 2005. Proyas said the aspect that attracted him the most was the "very different script" and the notion of people seeing the future and "how it [shapes] their lives". Summit Entertainment took on the responsibility to fully finance and distribute the film. Proyas and Stuart Hazeldine rewrote the draft for production, which began on March 25, 2008 in Melbourne, Australia. The director hoped to emulate The Exorcist in melding "realism with a fantastical premise".
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