| Image Upright: | 1.0 |
| Director: | Jack Bender |
| Starring: | Peter Fonda |
| Music: | Terence Blanchard |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Executive Producer: | Jack Bender Bonnie Raskin |
| Producer: | James Bigwood |
| Editor: | Stephen Lovejoy |
| Cinematography: | Steve Shaw |
| Runtime: | 85 minutes |
| Company: | Bonnie Raskin Productions NBC Studios |
The Tempest is a 1998 American drama television film directed by Jack Bender. It is a modernized adaptation of the William Shakespeare play The Tempest set in Mississippi during the American Civil War starring Peter Fonda as Gideon Prosper, a character based on Shakespeare's Prospero.
Gideon Prosper, a Southern enslaver, is forced off his plantation by his younger brother Anthony before the American Civil War's outbreak. Surviving in the Mississippi bayou, Prosper uses magic that he learned from one of the people he enslaved to protect his teenage daughter and to assist the Union.
Filming took place at Cypress Gardens, and other locations in, and around, Charleston, South Carolina.[1]
The film was broadcast on NBC at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, December 13, 1998.[2]
In his 2001 book Shakespeare in the Movies: From the Silent Era to Today, author Douglas Brode wrote, "Jack Bender's film emerged as yet another offbeat variation on Will's theme, but with the Bard's immortal poetry entirely excised."[3]
In a negative review for the Los Angeles Times, reviewer Daryl H. Miller wrote, "A miscalculation of epic proportions, this revision of one of the Bard's masterworks is at times laugh-out-loud awful, at times offensive."[4]
In a negative review for People, reviewer Terry Kelleher wrote, "The low-key style that served Fonda so well in his Oscar-nominated Ulee's Gold role doesn't work for Prosper/Prospero, who needs a charisma that the actor can't provide. The script gives Fonda two lines of actual Shakespeare at the end, and we admit he seems less than comfortable with the language."[2]
In a review for Variety, reviewer Laura Fries wrote, "What makes this production universally appealing is that it lacks the pretenses that usually come with a literary-based telepic. Writer James Henerson plays on such '90s issues as lost faith, selfishness, vengeance and loyalty to propel this Civil War-era saga."[5]