Hidalgo

Disney sold the film as fact, and the studio’s own reference site D23 still calls it the true story of the greatest long-distance horse race ever run. Awad Al-Badi, director of research at the King Faisal Center, says there is no record of Frank Hopkins setting foot on Arabian soil with or without his mustang. By the studio’s production notes, screenwriter John Fusco spent about 12 years researching and writing it. Joe Johnston shot most of the race around Ouarzazate in Morocco, where Omar Sharif had worked 40 years earlier on Lawrence of Arabia. The production notes say 5 horses played Hidalgo; T.J. carried the close-ups, the others were painted to match him, and Viggo Mortensen bought T.J. when the shoot wrapped. Johnston budgeted 70 effects shots and ended with 215, of which the ILM supervisor reckons fewer than 20 will read as computer work. The film took 108.1 million dollars against a budget of 100 million. A good fit if you want the desert carried by built sets and real animals rather than by digital work. Not for anyone who will watch assuming the events happened; the race itself is not a documented one.