As some wonder if 2024's Amber Alert movie was based upon a real-life event upon its Hulu streaming release, director Kerry Bellessa clarified the movie’s influences in a recent interview.
In Amber Alert, Nashville’s Hayden Panettiere and Tyler James Williams (of Everybody Hates Chris fame) play a woman taking a rideshare and her driver, respectively. The two work together to try and catch a young girl who is trapped in the back of her kidnapper’s car.
Amber Alert Director Kerry Bellessa Reveals the Story Behind the Movie
Released in September 2024, Amber Alert is a movie that follows a rescue attempt carried out by two citizens in a vehicle. As Kerry Bellessa, who helmed Amber Alert, explained to Dread Central on YouTube, the movie was very much rooted in his own past experiences:
“Yeah… my wife and I were actually driving from LA to Phoenix to visit my mother-in-law and we saw an active AMBER Alert. And those break your heart. I grabbed the wheel… I asked my wife if we had a bat because we are gonna find this car, run it off the road, and save a kid. We didn’t find it. My wife was like, ‘Is that the safest thing?’ But we had an hour-and-a-half-long discussion of ‘what would you do?’”
Bellessa’s Amber Alert is actually a 2024 remake of his previous film by the same title from 2012. Although that version took the form of a found footage affair, the newer incarnation of the movie is more traditionally shot. But clearly, the real-life circumstances that Bellessa went through made a profound impact on him.
Initially, the filmmaker had grand plans in bringing his first take on Amber Alert to life, going as far as desiring Academy Award-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (aka, Chivo) to work on the film. But Bellasso’s wife brought him back to Earth:
“I scoured the internet that night. I was like, this idea is awesome, why hasn’t anyone done it? And we- y’know, Hollywood didn’t give me $100 million dollars to make it. And we had five thousand dollars in our bank account. And my wife convinced me to make it found footage because there was no other way. And I wanted like, y’know, El Chivo to shoot it, I wanted, y’know, all the bells and whistles. She’s like ‘You’re a complete idiot, the story’s great. Let’s just go do it however we have to do it. And that’s how it kinda came about.”
Bellesso continued, turning his attention to his 2024 redo of Amber Alert. He remarked that the remake is the “film that we always wanted to make” and discussed the 2024 Amber Alert’s expanded scope:
“So after it came out, y’know, it was a small, tiny found footage film. Not many people even knew about it or saw it or whatever. Like, after that, [co-writer Joshua Oram] and I wrote the film that we always wanted to make… So we wrote the script and basically did what we always wanted to do... You could see more, y’know? We weren’t just stuck in the car. We could go on. The police officer, 911. Like, do the film that I always wanted to make. And so we’ve been trying for the last 10 years to get that made, which is this.”
He also expressed his relief and gratitude in finally being granted the opportunity to tell the story he wanted in the manner that he had always dreamt of:
“There have been tears of joy, there’s been tears of sadness. There’s been so many emotions. It’s like, ‘I love this, I hate this, let’s move on.’ But I always knew. We had opportunities to sell the script… I always knew that this film, this concept, our script was top-notch. I just needed to get the opportunity to make it.”
According to Kerry Bellesso, for Amber Alert’s remake to finally exist is a “miracle.”
So, while Amber Alert is not directly based on a true story, it was heavily influenced by actual events that Kerry Bellesso and his wife Summer had lived through.
The “AMBER” in AMBER Alert stands for “America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.” The system is employed when kids are abducted and it is meant to prompt civilians to assist in finding the kidnapped children.
Seven out of 10 AMBER Alerts result in the missing children being located and reunited with their parents or guardians (via a report from Protection1).
Amber Alert was distributed by Lionsgate and is available to stream on Hulu.
