Deep Impact 🎥 1998 Movie Info

Plot Summary

High school student Leo Biederman observes an unidentified object in the night sky at his astronomy club’s star party. His picture is sent to Marcus Wolf, who realizes it is a comet on a collision course with Earth. Wolf dies in a car crash while racing to raise the alarm. A year later, MSNBC reporter Jenny Lerner investigates Secretary of the Treasury, Alan Rittenhouse, over his connection with a woman named, “Ellie,” whom she assumes to be a mistress; she is confused when she finds him and his daughter, Lilly, loading a boat with large amounts of food and survival gear.

Lerner is apprehended by the FBI and taken to meet President Tom Beck, who persuades her not to share the story in return for a prominent role in the press conference he will arrange. She subsequently discovers that “Ellie” is actually an acronym — E.L.E. — which stands for, “extinction-level event.” Two days later, Beck announces that the Wolf–Biederman comet is on course to impact the Earth in roughly one year, and could cause humanity’s extinction. He reveals that the United States and Russia have been constructing the Messiah in orbit, a spacecraft to transport a team to alter the comet’s path with nuclear bombs. The Messiah launches a short time later, with a crew of five American astronauts, and one Russian cosmonaut.

They land on the outer-most layer of the comet, and drill the nuclear bombs deep beneath its surface, but it shifts into the sunlight. Consequently, Mission Commander Oren Monash is blinded, and an explosive release of gas propels medical officer Gus Partenza into space. The remaining crew escape, and detonate the bombs. However, rather than deflect the comet, the bombs split it in two. Beck announces the mission’s failure, and that both pieces—the larger now named Wolf and the smaller named Biederman—are still headed for Earth.

Meet the Cast