San Andreas: what natural disaster disrupted the release of the film in cinemas?

Released in cinemas in 2015, the blockbuster San Andreas will be rebroadcast on Sunday January 23, 2022 from 9:05 p.m. on TF1. Worn byDwayne Johnsonformerly known as The Rockthis feature film was baptized San Andreas with reference to the fault in the tectonic plate that runs along California. Concretely, the screenwriters of the film imagined how the disaster scenario predicted for years by many seismologists would unfold. As a reminder, they claim that California will one day be hit by a major earthquake caused by this famous fault. The earthquake that occurs in the feature film, with a magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale, is in fact inspired by the most devastating earthquake ever recorded (magnitude 8.2)which occurred in San Francisco in 1906.

However, reality caught up with fiction some time before the release of San Andreas,since a terrible earthquake hit Nepal, causing more than 5,000 deaths. Because of this tragedy, the Warner was forced to completely change the promotion of the film. The studio has therefore chosen to focus on earthquake prevention, instead of the dramatic and chaotic aspect of such an event. The feature film has therefore become a promotional tool, which has encouraged people to donate to humanitarian associations. What’s more, officials considered postponing the film’s theatrical release, before changing their minds.

San Andreas: when reality catches up with fiction

If the famous “Big One” still remains a myth across the Atlantic today, because no one is yet able to accurately predict what would happen in the event of such an earthquakethe scenario of San Andreas overall remains entirely probable, except for a few details. For example, the film shows a huge tsunami hitting the west coast of the USA. In reality, an earthquake caused by the fault of San Andreas would not produce such a tsunami, except if the epicenter is at sea. However, the famous fault of San Andreas is located only below ground. For a tsunami to move towards the west coast as seen on the screen, the epicenter of the earthquake would have to start from the fault of Cascadia, located off the coasts of Oregon and Washington State.

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