‘The Whale’: Read The Screenplay For The Play-Turned-Film That Made Brendan Fraser An Awards-Season Frontrunner

Patrick Hipes

10 January 2023 at 5:36 pm·1-min read

Editors note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will factor in this year’s movie awards races.

Darren Aronofsky held the movie rights to Samuel D. Hunter’s award-winning 2012 play The Whale for a decade before he finally got the elements he wanted. The wait was definitely worth it: The A24 film has been a success from the first second of the six-minute standing ovation it and the film’s star Brendan Fraser received after its world premiere in September at the Venice Film Festival.

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Hunter’s story centers on Charlie, a reclusive 600-pound English instructor who lives marooned on his couch. He seeks redemption in his life by attempting to re-connect with his estranged daughter (Sadie Sink). Eventually landing Off Broadway, the play won the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play in 2013 when it also scored a Drama Desk Award for Significant Contribution to Theatre.

Fraser and Sink star in the movie alongside Hong Chau, who plays Charlie’s caregiver. The cast also includes Ty Simpkins and Samantha Morton.

Fraser has been Oscar-buzzed since the beginning of the season, and has already scored Critics Choice and Golden Globe Best Actor nominations among others. Aronofsky told the Deadline Studio in Toronto where the film was in the lineup that he spent 10 years searching for the actor to play Charlie, describing the process as the “biggest hurdle” to making the film.

The Whale hit theaters in six theaters in Los Angeles and New York on December 9 and scored 2022’s best per-theater average. It later expanded, with its box office cume now sitting at $8.58 million.

Click to read Hunter’s script below:

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