THE BOYS THE BOAT IN

The Exciting Bestseller Turns Into A Major Feature Film Debuting This Holiday

BY MARK MOSCHETTI • FOR GO HUSKIES MAGAZINE

For Washington rowing fans, Olympic sports buffs, or even those who just want to celebrate a Pacific Northwest legend, Christmas Day can’t come soon enough.

That’s the release date for “The Boys in the Boat,” a new film about the Husky men’s rowing team, which won the gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. It will be released by MGM Studios and make its official debut in theaters across the country. (At press time, it was not yet known which theaters in the Seattle area will be screening the movie.)

The movie is based on the 2013 book by Daniel James Brown, which reached No. 1 on The New York Times Best Sellers list for non-fiction. It is directed by Academy Award-winning actor and filmmaker George Clooney and co-produced by Grant Heslov.

The movie, rated PG-13, revolves in large part around one of the rowers, Joe Rantz, who was left to fend for himself at a very young age. That role is played by British actor, and model, Callum Turner. Joel Edgerton stars as UW coach Al Ulbrickson, and Peter Guinness plays the role of famed race boat designer, and builder, George Pocock.

Washington rowing is known today as a top-caliber program. It has won 19 Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) national championships and six different eight-man titles at the world-renowned Henley Royal Regatta.

Photo Courtesy of University of Washington Library

But the 1936 group — a gritty bunch of working-class kids whose parents were ship builders, loggers, and farmers — had to work its way up the rankings.

Those Huskies did work their way up, eventually winning the school’s fourth IRA title. Along the journey, they built the kind of camaraderie that is unique to rowing, where every movement, every twitch, and every breath — by every rower — impacts each of the others. Even in winning the collegiate title, those Huskies had an underdog nature about them, and that was certainly true when they headed to Adolf Hitler’s Germany for the Olympics, where they would face the likes of the host country and Italy, amongst others.

In the race for the gold medal, on a day when Germany had already won multiple races, the Huskies powered through the final strokes to win by about 10 feet.

Filming of the movie began in March 2022 and concluded in July of that year. It took place in several locations, primarily in Berkshire, England. Other filming locations included London, Berlin, and Los Angeles. A limited number of scenes were shot in Seattle, including at the UW.

Along with the Dec. 25 premiere of the movie, Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) has an exhibit “Pulling Together: A Brief History of Rowing in Seattle” opening the day after Thanksgiving, Fri., Nov. 24. The exhibit will include artifacts and the history of the 1936 team.

In addition, guided tours of Washington’s Conibear Shellhouse are being offered on weekends. The tours, which last approximately 90 minutes, include a stop at the 1918 World War I airplane hangar which served as the ASUW Shellhouse for the legendary Olympic competitors. Numerous items from the team are on display. The tours were the brainchild of former Husky rower Melanie Barstow (Class of 2016) and are led by current and former UW rowers.