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Deep Impact
Deep Impact film poster
Directed by	Mimi Leder
Produced by	David Brown Richard D. Zanuck
Written by	Bruce Joel Rubin Michael Tolkin
Starring	Elijah Wood Téa Leoni Morgan Freeman Leelee Sobieski Vanessa Redgrave Robert Duvall
Music by	James Horner
Cinematography	Dietrich Lohmann
Editing by	Paul Cichocki David Rosenbloom
Distributed by	- USA - Paramount Pictures - non-USA - DreamWorks
Release date(s)	May 8, 1998
Running time	121 min.
Language	English
Budget	$75 million
IMDb profile

Deep Impact is a 1998 science fiction disaster film released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks SKG, which was inspired by the film When Worlds Collide. The film was directed by Mimi Leder, and stars Elijah Wood, Téa Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Leelee Sobieski, Vanessa Redgrave and Robert Duvall. The plot describes the events which take place surrounding the discovery of the fictional "Comet Wolf-Biederman," due to collide with the Earth, and the attempt to destroy the comet before impact. It was released in the United States on May 8, 1998.

A competing "space impact" film, Armageddon, was released about two months following Deep Impact. Unlike Armageddon, Deep Impact was lauded by astronomers as being scientifically relevant, although Armageddon did better at the box office.

Taglines

• "Heaven and Earth are about to collide".
• "Cities fall. Oceans rise. Hope survives".

Two teenage astronomy club members, Leo Biederman (Wood) and Sarah Hotchner (Sobieski), alert astronomer Dr. Marcus Wolf (Charles Martin Smith) to their sighting of an unusual comet. After Wolf realizes the comet will hit Earth he attempts to alert his colleagues, but he dies in a car accident after leaving the observatory. One year later, a reporter for MSNBC in Washington, DC, Jenny Lerner (Leoni), discovers that the government was hiding its knowledge about the comet, which the government had classified as an "E.L.E", an acronym for an extinction-level event.

After the government realizes that Lerner has become aware of the comet, they decide to make an announcement. U.S. President Tom Beck (Freeman) announces that the comet is seven miles wide, large enough to destroy civilization if it strikes Earth, and that NASA will send a crew of astronauts on the spaceship Messiah to the comet, now named "Wolf-Biederman". Led by Captain Spurgeon Tanner (Duvall), their mission is to destroy it using nuclear weapons. In order to prevent opportunism in this crisis period, Beck freezes all wages and prices. Life changes drastically worldwide, and Biederman and Lerner both become celebrities.

Messiah is constructed in orbit, and the crew use the Space Shuttle Atlantis to reach it. After they travel to the comet and plant the bombs by drilling, the vessel is damaged and several crew members are seriously injured by an explosion, and the crew's contact with mission control on Earth is cut off. The comet is not destroyed; instead, it splits into two chunks. Messiah’s remaining crew flies back to Earth with the unused bombs to destroy one or both. President Beck acknowledges Messiah’s failure and announces that special underground shelters have been built in Missouri and other areas.

The government will conduct a lottery to select 800,000 ordinary Americans to join 200,000 pre-selected scientists, engineers, teachers, artists, soldiers and officials. These people will be part of a worldwide effort to save mankind from extinction. Beck declares martial law as the lottery's selectees are notified. Jenny and Leo are both among the pre-selected. Leo gets permission to marry Sarah, to save her and her family, but on evacuation day, the soldiers have no record of the agreement to save Sarah's parents and sister. Sarah refuses to leave without them and Leo is forced to leave without her. When they get to the caves Leo decides he has to go back - he travels back to Sarah's house, but finds she isn't there so takes her dad's motorbike and manages to locate Sarah and her family on a gridlocked freeway. He takes Sarah and her infant sister on the motorbike to high ground in the Appalachian Mountains. Meanwhile, as MSNBC is being evacuated by helicopter, Jenny gives her seat to a co-worker with a young daughter and goes to be with her estranged father.

Ultimately, after a last-ditch effort to use all of Earth's missile-borne nuclear weapons to destroy the comets fails, the smaller of the two pieces of the comet ("Biederman") hits the North Atlantic Ocean near Virginia Beach and Cape Hatteras, creating a megatsunami several thousand feet high. Jenny and her father and Sarah's parents all die, along with the residents of cities such as Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Virginia, Savannah, Georgia, the majority of Florida, and Washington, D.C. (although only the plights of New York City and Virginia are shown). The world then prepares for the impact of Comet "Wolf", which is predicted to strike Northern Canada and create cloud of dust that will block the sun for two years, killing all remaining plant, animal, and human life that was not evacuated.

The crew members of Messiah inform NASA of their decision to try to blow up the remaining, larger fragment by flying into a fissure that has formed in the comet and exploding the remaining bombs. They will all die, but have enough time to say goodbye to their families. Messiah succeeds in breaking up "Wolf" into small enough pieces that they burn up entering Earth's atmosphere, saving humanity. Afterwards, President Beck gives an inspirational speech in front of the reconstructed U.S. Capitol building, in which he urges the nation to begin its recovery and rebuilding efforts.

• Robert Duvall as Captain Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner, USN
• Téa Leoni as Jenny Lerner
• Elijah Wood as Leo Biederman
• Morgan Freeman as President Tom Beck
• Vanessa Redgrave as Robin Lerner
• Maximilian Schell as Jason Lerner
• Leelee Sobieski as Sarah Hotchner

• James Cromwell as Al Rittenhouse
• Ron Eldard as Dr. Oren Monash, NASA
• Jon Favreau as Dr. Gus Partenza
• Laura Innes as Beth Stanley
• Mary McCormack as Andrea "Andy" Baker, NASA
• Richard Schiff as Don Biederman
• Blair Underwood as Mark Simon, NASA
• Dougray Scott as Eric Vennekor
• Gary Werntz as Chuck Hotchner
• Bruce Weitz as Stuart Caley
• Betsy Brantley as Ellen Biederman
• O'Neal Compton as Morten Entrekin
• Rya Kihlstedt as Chloe Lerner
• Aleksandr Baluyev as Colonel Mikhail Tulchinsky, VVS
• Katie Hagan as Jane Biederman
• Denise Crosby as Vicky Hotchner
• Charles Martin Smith as Dr. Marcus Wolf (uncredited)

• Extinction level event (ELE)
• Asteroid deflection strategies
• Armageddon
• List of disaster films

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Deep Impact

• Deep Impact at the Internet Movie Database
• Movie stills