🎬 9/11 (2017)
Based on play/musical
The 2017 film 9/11 is an adaptation of Patrick James Carson's stage play Elevator, which premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2006. The play's intimate, single-setting structure—a stalled elevator in the North Tower—was expanded for the screen by director Martin Guigui and co-writer Steven Golebiowski, who added exterior scenes and a broader narrative scope. The film stars Charlie Sheen as billionaire Jeffrey Cage, Whoopi Goldberg as elevator dispatcher Metzie, and Gina Gershon as Eve, alongside Luis Guzmán and Jacqueline Bisset. While the play confined its action entirely to the elevator, the film intercuts between the trapped characters and the outside world, including Metzie's efforts to coordinate rescue from her post in the lobby. The adaptation also introduces a subplot involving a bicycle courier (played by Wood Harris) who becomes a key figure in the group's survival. Critics noted that the film's expanded scope diluted the claustrophobic tension of the original play, though the core premise—ordinary people facing an extraordinary crisis in a confined space—remained intact. The film was released on September 8, 2017, just days before the 16th anniversary of the attacks, and received mixed reviews for its handling of the sensitive subject matter.
Elevator is a stage play written by Patrick James Carson. The play is a one-act drama set entirely within an elevator car in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001. It follows a small group of strangers who become trapped together after the impact of American Airlines Flight 11, forcing them to confront their personal conflicts and shared mortality in a confined, increasingly desperate space. The play premiered in 2006 at the New York International Fringe Festival, where it received critical attention for its intimate, character-driven approach to the events of 9/11. Carson's script focuses on the psychological and emotional dynamics among the characters rather than the external catastrophe, using the elevator as a metaphor for isolation and collective trauma.