Extraordinary Measures

Plot

Brendan Fraser plays John Crowley, a biotechnology executive whose two youngest children were afflicted with Pompe disease or acid maltase deficiency. In the film his children are aged 8 and 6.

Along with his wife Aileen (Keri Russell), he raises money for research scientist Robert Stonehill (Harrison Ford), forming a company to develop a drug to save his childrens lives.

Cast

John Crowley makes a cameo appearance as a venture capitalist.

Production

Adapted by Robert Nelson Jacobs from a nonfiction book "The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million—and Bucked the Medical Establishment—in a Quest to Save His Children" by the Pulitzer Prize journalist Geeta Anand, the film is also an examination of how medical research is conducted and financed.

Filming took place at several spots in and around Portland, Oregon, mostly at the OHSU Doernbecher Childrens Hospital, Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Nike campus in Beaverton, Oregon. This was the first time Nike allowed filming on their campus and they donated the location payment to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. During filming, the working title was The Untitled Crowley Project.

In the film, the children are 9 and 7 years old. Their non-fiction counterparts were diagnosed at 15 months and 7 days old and received treatment at 5 and 4, respectively.

Inspiration

Myozyme, a drug developed for treating Pompe disease, was simultaneously approved for sale by the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency. Henceforth, more than 1000 infants born worldwide every year with Pompe disease will no longer face the prospect of death before reaching their first birthday for lack of a treatment for the condition.

The screenplay by Robert Nelson Jacobs is based on Geeta Anands book The Cure (ISBN 9780060734398). Parts of the book first appeared as a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal.

The small start-up company Priozyme was based on Oklahoma City-based Novazyme. The larger company, called Zymagen in the film, was based on Genzyme in Cambridge, MA. Novazyme was developing a protein therapeutic, with several biological patents pending, to treat Pompe Disease, when it was bought by Genzyme. The patent portfolio was cited in the press releases announcing the deal.

According to Genzyme, Dr. Robert Stonehills character is based upon scientist and researcher William Canfield, who founded Novazyme. Roger Ebert, in his review, says the character is based on Yuan-Tsong Chen, a scientist and researcher from Duke University who collaborated with Genzyme in producing Myozyme, the drug which received FDA approval.

Critical response

The film opened to mixed reviews. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 27% based on reviews from 136 critics, with an average rating of 4.8 out of 10. The sites general consensus is that "Despite a timely topic and a pair of heavyweight leads, Extraordinary Measures never feels like much more than a made-for-TV tearjerker." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 0–100 reviews from film critics, has a rating score of 45 based on 33 reviews.

Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote: "Fraser keeps the story anchored in reality. Meredith Droeger does too: as the Crowleys afflicted daughter, shes a smart little bundle of fighting spirit. So is the movie, which keeps its head while digging into your heart. You have this critics permission to cry in public." The New York Times??? A. O. Scott said in his review: "The startling thing about Extraordinary Measures is not that it moves you. Its that you feel, at the end, that you have learned something about the way the world works."

Ramona Bates MD, writing for the health news organisation, EmaxHealth, stated that the film brings attention to Pompe disease. Peter Rainer from The Christian Science Monitor mentions that Big Pharma got a surprisingly free pass in the film and that it will come as a surprise to all those sufferers struggling to get orphan drugs developed.

Jef Akst, writing for the journal, The Scientist, stated that the film is good depiction of the "hard to swallow fiscal issues of drug development".

Box office

The film opened at #8 on its opening weekend, taking in $6 million. The film experienced sharp declines and only remained in theaters for four weeks as it only earned $12 million, making it a box office bomb.