Flight to Whenever

It wasn’t post-production problems but the current glut of action movies that caused Paramount Pictures to pull “Flight of the Intruder” from the summer release schedule, says producer Mace Neufeld.

“I agreed with (the studio) that it was wrong to throw it into the middle of all those hardware films,” says Neufeld, “especially since our movie is character-oriented.”

(Paramount previously scored a box-office coup by similarly shifting the distribution date of Neufeld’s hit “The Hunt for Red October” from the busy Christmas season to early spring.)

“Intruder,” originally set for a July 13 release, would have been thrown in with the current army of heavy-artillery pictures, as well as a pair of upcoming military titles, Tri-Star’s “Air America” and Warner Bros.’ “Memphis Belle.”

Based on Stephen Coonts’ Vietnam War novel about an unauthorized raid on a Hanoi missile depot, and starring Willem Dafoe, Danny Glover and Brad Johnson, the $30-million “Intruder” wrapped principal photography last spring. Much of the filming took place aboard the aircraft carrier Independence when it was in San Diego, “which means we worked around the Navy’s schedule,” says Neufeld.

As a result, the film company didn’t get an optional scene it wanted--which is why director John Milius and a crew of about 30 recently reassembled to film a scene involving Glover and Johnson, aboard the flight deck of the Ranger. “It came into San Diego, and we grabbed at the opportunity to get that scene,” says Neufeld. “After all, you just don’t put in an order for one of these things to come into port.”