Before the groundbreaking, visually stunning space thriller “ Gravity ” won Alfonso Cuarón his first Academy Award for Best Director, it was just an idea the filmmaker and his son banged out hoping to scrounge up some money from studios. As reported by Deadline , this weekend, prior to receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award at Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, Cuarón participated in the latest session of the masterclass series held there where he discussed the fallout from “Children of Men” that led to him making “Gravity,” as well as the technical and financial challenges he faced along the way. “After ‘Children of Men,’ which was a complete commercial flop ($70 million worldwide on a $76 million budget), the appetite to work with me plummeted,” Cuarón said.
“So I started writing and developing a film with my son. I started prepping and the cast featured Charlotte Gainsbourg and Guillaume Canet. It was about a road trip from the South of France to the north of Scotland.
It was very difficult to finance and the film fell apart. At the same time, I was going through the worst times in my personal life.” Cuarón went on to share how he was “completely out of money” and told his collaborators that he needed to keep working, “but no arty shit.
” He needed a project “that would let a studio give me a check.” Cuarón went on to outline and script “Gravity” with his son, Jonas, but when they presented it to Warner Bros., the studi.