“We were just overwhelmed by the reaction.”
That’s how director Simon Wincer remembers the first time a test audience saw his movie. It was 1993, and the movie was “Free Willy,” the story of a lonely 12-year-old boy named Jesse who makes friends with a whale named Willy at a struggling amusement park and decides to set him free.
Hardly anyone at the studio had paid much attention to it. It was a small family picture with no big stars. Then a crowd sat down to watch it one Saturday morning in Woodland Hills, just outside Los Angeles.
The cards came back with a score of 96. Wincer later said it was one of the highest scores Warner Bros. had ever seen at a test screening. A second preview was set up, and this time everyone from the studio showed up to watch.
All of a sudden, the little whale movie had money to spend.
“So the budget for the music went up,” Wincer said, “and we could afford a song from Michael Jackson.”
Getting Michael was one thing. Getting a brand new song from him was another. He reportedly couldn’t finish a new one in time. Wincer has also reportedly said that one of the film’s producers first told Michael about the movie after running into him in a dentist’s waiting room. Once Michael saw an early cut, he gave them a song.
It was one he already had.
The filmmakers placed it right at the end, after the scene everyone remembers. To get Willy to leap over the seawall, the crew built what Wincer called a “rocket-launcher” and put a full-size model whale on it. Then, as the credits began to roll, Michael’s voice came in.
He also made a music video for it. It mixes footage from his world tour concerts with scenes of Jesse and Willy, and music TV channels played it over and over that summer. Early VHS copies of the movie reportedly ran the video before the film even started.
Michael’s music video, mixed with scenes from the movie
“Free Willy” opened in July 1993 and turned into one of the surprise hits of the summer. Michael’s song climbed to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was also the very first single on Michael’s own record label.
The following June, at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards, it was up for Best Song From a Movie. It went up against Celine Dion, The Proclaimers and Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia,” which had just won the Oscar a few months before.
Michael’s song won.
That song was “Will You Be There,” from his 1991 album “Dangerous.” He had first sung it on TV back in 1991, long before anyone had heard of Willy, with a choir behind him and an orchestra opening the track. A boy and his whale gave it a whole new life.