40 Fun Facts About Passenger 57

The number in the title of Passenger 57 was borrowed from the label of which food brand?

Heinz and its "57" mark gave writer Stewart Raffill the title: stuck for a name, he noticed a ketchup bottle and borrowed the number.

Entertainment Weekly summed up Passenger 57 as which 1988 action hit moved to 38,000 feet?

Die Hard was the template of one trained man against a gang in a sealed space. The magazine headlined its set visit "Fly Hard".

Five years before Passenger 57, Wesley Snipes played a gang leader in which pop star's Scorsese-directed video?

Michael Jackson cast the then-unknown Snipes as Mini Max, the gang leader who confronts him in the 18-minute short film for Bad.

The actor who plays police chief Leonard Biggs in Passenger 57 was the real-life father of which Gossip Girl star?

Blake Lively is the daughter of Ernie Lively, who later played her character's father in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Which comic-book vampire hunter did Passenger 57 star Wesley Snipes go on to play in a film trilogy?

Blade reached cinemas in 1998, and Snipes returned to the half-vampire Daywalker for two sequels and again in Deadpool & Wolverine.

After Passenger 57, Wesley Snipes played the villain Simon Phoenix opposite which action star in Demolition Man?

Sylvester Stallone played John Spartan, the reckless cop frozen alongside Phoenix and thawed decades later to catch him.

Which future Austin Powers star plays Sabrina Ritchie, a hijacker posing as cabin crew in Passenger 57?

Elizabeth Hurley got her first big-budget film role as Rane's second-in-command, five years before playing Vanessa Kensington.

Which streetball comedy with Woody Harrelson did Wesley Snipes release in the same year as Passenger 57?

White Men Can't Jump reached cinemas in March 1992, about seven months before Snipes's airline thriller.

The Norman Brown track heard in Passenger 57 covers Too High, a 1973 song by which Motown star?

Stevie Wonder wrote Too High as a cautionary anti-drug song for his landmark album Innervisions.

Stewart Raffill wrote the first script of Passenger 57 as a vehicle for a star like which actor?

Clint Eastwood was the model for the original hero, a father flying to Spain to bury his son who ends up seated beside a hijacker.

When the FBI catch up with Charles Rane at the start of Passenger 57, what is he about to undergo?

Plastic surgery was Rane's plan for slipping past the police, but he is seized before the operation and put on a flight to stand trial.

To which city, where Charles Rane is due to stand trial, is the hijacked flight in Passenger 57 bound?

Los Angeles is where the FBI want Rane tried, so two agents escort him onto the same flight that John Cutter boards as its 57th passenger.

What event, which still haunts John Cutter throughout Passenger 57, killed his wife?

A convenience store robbery took her life, and the widowed Cutter now teaches anti-terrorism tactics and self-defence to flight crews.

How does hijacker Charles Rane meet his end in the final fight of Passenger 57?

Kicked out of the jet through a blown-out door, Rane falls to his death after a bullet blows out a window and decompresses the cabin.

Where on the airliner is John Cutter when Charles Rane's men begin the hijacking in Passenger 57?

In the lavatory when the shooting starts, Cutter uses the on-board phone to warn the airline before one of the hijackers finds him.

How does John Cutter force the hijackers of Passenger 57 to bring the airliner down early?

Dumping its fuel by tripping the circuitry leaves Rane no choice but to order the surviving pilots down to a small airfield.

In which US state is the small airfield where the hijacked jet in Passenger 57 touches down?

Louisiana is home to the film's fictional Lake Lucille airfield, where the local police chief takes Cutter for one of the hijackers and arrests him.

After the hijackers slip off the jet in Passenger 57, John Cutter chases Charles Rane through which event?

A county fair is where Cutter runs Rane down, having spotted that the release of half the passengers was only a diversion.

Which former child actor from the film Sounder directed Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57?

Kevin Hooks played the elder son in 1972's Sounder, and for his airline thriller he cast his own father, Robert, as an FBI agent.

Which RADA-trained actor plays the hijacker Charles Rane opposite Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57?

Bruce Payne is best known as Rane; in the late 1980s he was one of the "Brit Pack" of rising actors alongside Tim Roth and Colin Firth.

Which actor, later seen in Heat and Saving Private Ryan, plays Sly Delvecchio in Passenger 57?

Tom Sizemore plays the old friend who talks Cutter into a senior job with the airline's new anti-terrorism unit.

Bruce Greenwood, the airline boss in Passenger 57, later played which real US president in Thirteen Days?

John F. Kennedy was Greenwood's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis drama, a performance that won him a Satellite Award.

Michael Horse, the henchman Forget in Passenger 57, is best known as Deputy Hawk in which cult TV mystery?

Twin Peaks made Horse famous as Deputy Tommy "Hawk" Hill, a part he reprised when the series returned in 2017.

Which jazz bassist, a founder of the band Return to Forever, composed the score for Passenger 57?

Stanley Clarke mixed jazz fusion with grand orchestral pieces for the film, a year after scoring Boyz n the Hood.

Richard Nord, who edited Passenger 57, earned an Oscar nomination a year later for which Harrison Ford thriller?

The Fugitive brought Nord nominations from the Academy, BAFTA and the American Cinema Editors for his cutting of the 1993 chase thriller.

Stewart Raffill, who wrote the story for Passenger 57, directed which alien film panned as an E.T. imitation?

Mac and Me won Raffill the Golden Raspberry for Worst Director, and critics also mocked its heavy product placement for McDonald's and Coca-Cola.

Passenger 57 was shot in which Florida city, the birthplace of its star Wesley Snipes?

Orlando hosted the shoot in early 1992, and Snipes's mother and grandmother, who lived there, cooked a soul-food lunch for the whole cast and crew.

Which baseball comedy gave Passenger 57 star Wesley Snipes the role of base-stealer Willie Mays Hayes?

Major League was the part Snipes chose over a small role in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, and it began his run of box-office hits.

The year before Passenger 57, Wesley Snipes played the Harlem drug lord Nino Brown in which crime film?

New Jack City gave Snipes a part written specifically for him by Barry Michael Cooper, and it brought him to wide attention.

Two years after Passenger 57, Wesley Snipes faced another mid-air hijacking in which skydiving thriller?

Drop Zone opens with an apparent hijacking aboard a Boeing 747, and Snipes's insurance policy barred him from doing the parachute jumps himself.

Wesley Snipes, the martial artist who stars in Passenger 57, holds a fifth-degree black belt in which discipline?

Karate, in its Shotokan style, is Snipes's highest rank; he began training at 12 and also holds a second-degree black belt in hapkido.

How does John Cutter get back aboard the airliner as it speeds down the runway late in Passenger 57?

Via the nose landing gear: with Chief Biggs's help, Cutter leaps from a moving car onto the jet just before take-off.

In Stewart Raffill's first script for Passenger 57, the hijacker forced the airliner to fly to which country?

Iran was the destination, and a studio chief feared cinemas would be bombed if that version were filmed, so the story was rewritten.

Which Hollywood studio released Passenger 57 in the same year as its own Lethal Weapon 3?

Warner Bros. had owned the script since Stewart Raffill's early drafts, and the finished film opened at number one in November 1992.

Which fictional airline hires John Cutter to help run its new anti-terrorism unit in Passenger 57?

Atlantic International wants Cutter to head its new counter-terrorism unit, and he is flying as a passenger on one of its own jets when the hijackers strike.

The control tower seen in Passenger 57 was a relic of an air station once run by which military branch?

US Navy jets flew from Naval Air Station Sanford until 1969; its old tower and hangar appear in the film and were demolished soon after.

Which three-engine airliner serves as the hijacked jet at the centre of Passenger 57?

A Lockheed L-1011 TriStar carries the story, and the cabin scenes were shot inside a real one resting on wooden supports at a Florida studio.

Wesley Snipes, the star of Passenger 57, was born in Florida but grew up in which New York City borough?

The Bronx is where Snipes was raised, and he later returned to New York to earn a fine arts degree at SUNY Purchase.

What job does Marti Slayton, a former student of John Cutter, hold aboard the airliner in Passenger 57?

Flight attendant Marti Slayton learned self-defence in Cutter's class, and she escapes with him to the cargo hold once the hijack begins.

Bruce Greenwood, the airline boss in Passenger 57, later played Captain Christopher Pike in which film franchise?

Star Trek cast Greenwood as Pike in J. J. Abrams's 2009 reboot, and he returned for the sequel Into Darkness four years later.