Why The Aeronauts’ Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are flying high for the Oscars

Oct 29 , 2019

British actress Felicity Jones and British actor Eddie Redmayne met the press at the film premiere of The Aeronauts, during the London Film Festival at London’s Leicester Square. Photo: EPA-EFE

Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones revive their The Theory of Everything partnership in new adventure movie The Aeronauts – we caught up with director Tom Harper and producer Todd Liebermann on the red carpet at London’s Leicester Square

One of the hottest premieres at this year’s BFI London Film Festival was The Aeronauts – a biographical adventure story based on the pioneering hot air balloon journeys of meteorologist James Glaisher in the mid-19th century.

We were there on the red carpet with stars Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones and Rebecca Front, director Tom Harper and producer Todd Liebermann, ahead of the film’s international release on November 4. Check all the action from London’s Leicester Square in our exclusive video below.

Made on a budget on US$40 million, from a spec script by Jack Thorne, The Aeronauts follows Redmayne’s real-life Glaisher and Jones’ fictional Amelia Wren as they set out in a hot-air balloon to take crucial measurements in the development of meteorology – but find themselves in a fight for survival as the air runs out, and the temperature drops.

A co-production between Amazon Prime and Entertainment One, The Aeronauts is not the season’s only headline gala produced by a streaming service, and the inclusion of both The Aeronauts and Martin Scorsese's The Irishman – produced by Netflix – at the UK’s banner film fest shows the growing production prowess of home entertainment services.

Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones play pioneering meteorologists in The Aeronauts.

Shot partially in Imax, the film has been praised for its impressive visuals, as well as the chemistry of its two leads, who previously starred together as husband and wife in the similarly scientific Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything (2014).

However the film has met with some controversy for “airbrushing” out Glashier’s historical contemporary, the aeronaut Henry Coxwell. Amelia Wren was instead based on two female aeronauts, Sophie Blanchard and Margaret Graham.

On the red carpet with Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones at the London premiere of The Aeronauts. Photo: PA/DPA

Talking exclusively to STYLE, director Harper defended the decision, explaining “the whole film was based on an amalgam of stories anyway … and the real balloon flight were these two men [who] didn’t really talk because they were so busy taking measurements.”

On the red carpet on October 7, both Harper and Liebermann cited the film’s importance to current audiences. “The fact [is] that these early aeronauts went to such risks,” Harper added, “in order to expand our knowledge of the world.”