Wolfgang Petersen, the German filmmaker whose World War II submarine epic Das Boot propelled him right into a blockbuster Hollywood profession that included the movies In the Line of Fire, Air Force One and The Perfect Storm, has died. He was 81.
Petersen died Friday at his residence within the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood after a battle with pancreatic most cancers, stated consultant Michelle Bega.
Wolfgang Petersen, born in Emden, Germany, made two options earlier than his 1982 breakthrough, Das Boot. Then the most costly film in German movie historical past, the 149-minute Das Boot (the unique lower ran 210 minutes) chronicled the extreme claustrophobia of life aboard a doomed German U-boat through the Battle of the Atlantic, with Jürgen Prochnow because the submarine’s commander. Heralded as an antiwar masterpiece, Das Boot was nominated for six Oscars, together with for Petersen’s path and his adaptation of Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s best-selling 1973 novel.
To Petersen, who grew up on the northern coast of Germany, the ocean lengthy held his fascination. He would return to it within the 2000 catastrophe movie, The Perfect Storm, a true-life story of a fishing boat misplaced at sea.
“The power of water is unbelievable,” Petersen stated in a 2009 interview. “I was always impressed as a kid how strong it is, all the damage the water could do when it just turned within a couple of hours, and smashed against the shore.”
Das Boot launched Wolfgang Petersen as a filmmaker in Hollywood, the place he grew to become one of many prime makers of motion adventures of huge cataclysms that spanned struggle (2004′s Troy, with Brad Pitt), pandemic (the 1995 ebolavirus-inspired Outbreak) and different ocean-set disasters (2006′s Poseidon, in regards to the capsizing of an ocean liner).
Petersen is survived by second spouse Maria-Antoinette Borgel, a German script supervisor and assistant director whom he wed in 1978, son Daniel Petersen and two grandchildren.
