“Hachi: A Dog’s Tale” is based on the true story of an Akita so devoted to his master that he waited for him each day at a Tokyo train station. True, the film has made more than $40 million worldwide, but after watching it, the explanation seems abundantly clear. They seem to be able to run away with anyone.The packet that arrived from the Hallmark Channel with the screener for “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale” was topped by a faux hand-written note insisting, in an almost threatening manner: “This time you will cry for real.” It also included this odd statement: " Richard Gere has no explanation as to why the critically acclaimed film did not get a U.S.
“You can’t say that about the Cavalier King Charles. “The Akitas had a very wonderful, reserved personality and stoic demeanor,” Mr. Hallstrom seemed impressed with his Akita actors, particularly when compared with his family’s two Cavalier King Charles spaniels. Gere said that though all filmmakers would prefer their work to play in theaters, he was glad his dog story had found a home, and that his son, now 10, was able to appreciate it. “We didn’t even wait for them to finish the sentence.”
“It was one of those, ‘Would you like to buy it?’ ‘Yes,’ ” said Michelle Vicary, the channel’s senior vice president for acquisitions and scheduling. The opportunity offered by Sony to present the debut of a film with recognizable names, and a story line that resonated with its audience, was essentially irresistible. The Hallmark Channel, which broadcasts about 22 original movies a year and is available to 90 million cable subscribers nationally, quickly stepped into the breach. “ ‘Just come and hang with us and be yourself.’ ” “He said, ‘Don’t touch them, don’t reach out, don’t even look at them in that first meeting,’ ” Mr. Gere described his introduction to his four-legged co-stars by an animal trainer as if he were being initiated into a rock star’s entourage. “Whether it is eccentrics or outsiders or dogs, I want to be as truthful as possible in depicting them.” The film was shot primarily in Rhode Island, using three Akitas to play the different stages of Hachi’s life and his varying dispositions: one dog that was good at sitting calmly, a second that was trained to walk slowly and a third that “ran a lot and jumped a lot and licked people’s faces,” Mr. “I don’t point fingers at the different incarnations of life,” Mr. Hallstrom said in a telephone interview.īut he added that he found the title character in “Hachi” as compelling as any of the humans he’d focused on in his previous films. “I had taken pride in being absolutely unsentimental with ‘My Life as a Dog,’ and this was a very sentimental story,” Mr. Hallstrom, who broke through in the United States with his Swedish coming-of-age film, “My Life as a Dog,” in which the young protagonist is shattered to learn of the death of his family’s hound, said he was wary of taking on material that was in any way similar. Hallstrom, who had recently directed him in “The Hoax,” a 2007 film about the forger Clifford Irving. The movie, which has already sold more than $45 million in tickets during its release over the past year in Asian, European and South American markets, is a contemporary retelling of the story of Hachiko, an Akita who lived in Japan in the 1920s and ’30s.Īfter joining the film in the role of the professor as well as a producer, Mr. The result may be satisfying to that cable channel, but it’s somewhat perplexing to its animal-loving leading man and director. Instead the movie, “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale,” will make its United States television debut on Sunday on the Hallmark Channel.
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Gere shares the screen with a particularly faithful canine character can bury any hopes of watching it in a local movie theater. Hallstrom, the director of “Dear John” and “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” in which Mr. Gere, the “Chicago” and “Pretty Woman” actor, and Mr. And since time immemorial or at least since the 1943 release of “Lassie Come Home” there has been a loyal viewership for pictures about dogs and their unflagging fidelity to their human companions.īut American filmgoers interested in the latest collaboration between Mr. In the animal kingdom of Hollywood, there is still an audience for movies whose casts feature Richard Gere, and for films directed by Lasse Hallstrom.
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