Wolfgang Petersen
Wolfgang Petersen was a German film and television director, screenwriter and producer. His international breakthrough was the war film Das Boot, which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. He subsequently directed the blockbuster fantasy film The NeverEnding Story, based on the 1979 novel of the same name.
After moving to the United States in the mid-1980s, Petersen directed his first American production, the science-fiction film Enemy Mine. He directed a variety of major studio productions through the mid-2000s, including In the Line of Fire, Outbreak, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm, Troy and Poseidon.
In addition to his Oscar nominations, Petersen won three Bambi Awards, a Bavarian Film Award and a German Film Award. He was also a founding member of the Deutsche Filmakademie.
Early life
Petersen was born on 14 March 1941 in the northern harbour city, just a few miles from the Netherlands, Emden, the son of a naval officer. From 1953 to 1960, Petersen attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg.He made his first films with an 8 mm camera while still at school. In the 1960s he was directing plays at Hamburg's Ernst Deutsch Theater. After studying theater in Berlin and Hamburg, Petersen attended the Film and Television Academy in Berlin.
Career
Petersen's first productions were for German television and it was during his work on the popular German Tatort TV series that he first met and worked with the actor Jürgen Prochnow — who would later appear as the U-boat captain in Petersen's famous Das Boot. The most famous of his Tatort episodes is Reifezeugnis from 1977 with the young Nastassja Kinski. He shot 6 Tatort episodes.Petersen made his first theatrical feature film in 1974, the psychological thriller One or the Other of Us, based on the novel Einer von uns beiden by Horst Bosetzky and published anonymously under his pseudonym and starring Jürgen Prochnow. He next directed the 1977 film Die Konsequenz, a black/white adaptation of Alexander Ziegler's autobiographical novel of homosexual love. In its time, the film was considered so radical that when first broadcast in Germany, the Bavarian network Bayerischer Rundfunk turned off the transmitters rather than broadcast it.
His next feature was the World War II epic Das Boot, released in early 1982. The film chronicles the experiences of a German submarine crew engaged in the "Battle of the Atlantic". Though not an immediate financial success, the film received highly positive reviews and was nominated for six Academy Awards, two of which went to Petersen; he was also nominated for a BAFTA Award and DGA Award. The film starred Jürgen Prochnow as the U-boat Captain, who became a good example of Petersen's action characters, a man at war who confronts danger and fate at sea.
After The NeverEnding Story, Petersen's first English-language film, he directed Enemy Mine, which was not a critical or box office success. He hit his stride in 1993 with the assassination thriller In the Line of Fire. Starring Clint Eastwood as an angst-ridden presidential Secret Service guard, In the Line of Fire gave Petersen the box office clout he needed to direct another suspense thriller, Outbreak, starring Dustin Hoffman. The 1997 Petersen blockbuster Air Force One did very well at the box office, with generally positive critical reviews from movie critics. For both Air Force One and Outbreak, Petersen teamed up with the German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who has also worked frequently with director Martin Scorsese.
By 1998, Petersen was an established Hollywood director, with the power to both re-release his classic Das Boot in a new director's cut and to helm star-studded action-thrillers. As such, he was originally considered to direct the first movie in the Harry Potter film series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Petersen pulled out of the running in March 2000.
In the 2000s, Petersen continued to direct two summer blockbusters, the films The Perfect Storm and Troy. The success of the former helped his Radiant Productions company to sign a deal with Warner Bros. In 2003, he was set to direct a Batman vs. Superman film, but deciding to make Troy instead.
Petersen's $160 million epic film Poseidon, a re-telling of the 1969 Paul Gallico novel The Poseidon Adventure, was released by Warner Bros. in May 2006. The film performed poorly in the U.S., barely exceeding $60 million in domestic box office receipts by early August, but international sales surpassed $121 million.
Although hired to direct the film adaptation of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card that was scheduled for release in 2008, he later "moved on" from the project. His potential projects included a live-action adaptation of the 2006 anime film Paprika and a film adaptation of the science fiction novel Old Man's War.
After a ten-year hiatus, Petersen returned in 2016 as director of the heist comedy Vier gegen die Bank, his first German-language film since Das Boot in 1981.
Personal life
Petersen's first marriage was with actress ; they had a son. In 1978, he married his assistant Maria Borgel. Petersen moved to Los Angeles in 1986 and subsequently acquired American citizenship.Death
Petersen died of pancreatic cancer on 12 August 2022, at the age of 81, at his home in Brentwood, Los Angeles.Filmography
Source:Television
TV movies| Year | Title | Director | Writer |
| 1965 | Stadt auf Stelzen | ||
| 1972 | Anna und Totò | ||
| 1973 | ' | ||
| 1973 | ' | ||
| 1974 | Aufs Kreuz gelegt | ||
| 1975 | ' | ||
| 1975 | Stellenweise Glatteis | ||
| 1976 | ' | ||
| 1976 | Vier gegen die Bank | ||
| 1977 | ' | ||
| 1977 | Die Konsequenz | ||
| 1978 | Schwarz und weiß wie Tage und Nächte |
TV series'
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Executive producer | Notes |
| 1971–1977 | Tatort | Directed 6 episodes; Wrote 2 episodes | |||
| 2001–2003 | The Agency'' | 4 episodes |