Lost on a Mountain in Maine, a movie adaptation of the book of the same name that chronicles the experiences of Donn Fendler, a 12-year-old boy from Rye who survived nine days in the Maine wilderness as a child in 1939, has released its first movie trailer in anticipation of national release this fall. MyRye.com interviewed Ryan Cook, one of the filmmakers behind the upcoming movie, earlier this summer.
Brother Lives in Rye
While Donn Fendler passed away in 2016, his 96-year-old brother Tom Fendler still lives in Rye. He told MyRye.com he remembered Donn’s disappearance “as if it was yesterday, not 85 years ago.”
“My father took me, my twin brothers Donn and Ryan, and two teenage family friends for a hike. What started out as a fun summer day turned into a nightmare. I was eleven at the time and terrified that Donn had perished somewhere in that rugged terrain. You can’t imagine the rough footing on the trails and the dense vegetation. How he survived those conditions alone for nine days is really a miracle.
“It was about two weeks after he was found that I was able to see him. He had been in the hospital. Ryan and I had been staying with family friends while our parents dealt with the search for Donn. I couldn’t believe how skinny Donn was and how badly his feet were injured from losing his sneakers after the first day of being lost. Most of the bug bites had healed by then, though. All I know is that it was great to have him back with us again. Amazingly, Donn’s story is known by generations of people, especially in Maine, and is woven into the fabric of my extended family. It’s wonderful that Ryan Cook was so captured by the story that he and his friend persevered for ten years to bring it to the screen.”
Distribution and Production Companies & Trailer
Blue Fox Entertainment has acquired distribution rights for the film, which will be released in theaters nationwide on November 1st. A trailer for the film was released this past Monday (viewable below). Blue Fox has distributed films including Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, a coming-of-age romance based on the novel of the same name, and the family animated movie The Inventor, which stars Daisy Ridley, Marion Cotillard, and Stephen Fry.
Cook explained that Blue Fox was the best choice to distribute Lost on a Mountain in Maine because the company shares the team’s passion for the project and their vision for a theatrical release. He noted that this kind of wide theatrical release is “not the norm for independent movies,” which usually go directly to streaming. However, Cook believes Lost on a Mountain in Maine is made for the big screen.
“It’s a movie about the wilderness,” he said, “and we put in great effort to really showcase everything Donn was up against––on camera, but also in the score and the sound of the movie. When you’re sitting in a theater and you’re fully immersed in both the visuals and the audio of the environment that we created, it’s pretty powerful.”
Balboa Productions, Sylvester Stallone’s production company, served as producers for the film and helped ensure it maintained the integrity of the source material. “They have historically made movies about underdogs,” Cook said of Balboa Productions, “and they said they had never made an underdog story about a kid. And that’s really Donn Fendler’s story: a young kid up against all odds.”
Here is the trailer:
