I said, “ Jason James Richter.” They said, “Well, would you cast him?” I said, “Yeah, subject to meeting with him first.” By this point, it was like 10 o’clock at night, so they say okay and have him come into the studio the following morning. Kids auditioning for the lead part and they asked which actor I was drawn to. We talked about Free Willy and then they showed me-this is 4 weeks before they were scheduled to start shooting-and they showed me about 12 audition tapes of young boys. And I’m in a room with these producers, it’s 8 o’clock at night and I’ve just flown in from Moscow. So I got her on the phone and she said, “Warner Bros has fired the director on Free Willy and it’s in pre-production.” I was scheduled to go home from Russia to Australia (so I could catch up with my family) before going to Skywalker, but she said, “Can you come back to Los Angeles and meet me at Warner Bros?” She said that a job had come back and she needed an immediate answer. While I was in the production office I got this message from my agent asking me to call urgently.

Simon Wincer: Anyway, a few months later I was off in Russia of all places, filming an episode of Young Indiana Jones. Wincer is referring to Robin Armstrong, whose film One Cup of Coffee (later retitled Pastime ) was in competition at Sundance in 1991. With a younger director who had won Sundance. About a month later she rang back and told me they’d decided to go in a different direction. Here the full story about “Free Willy” and how they saved the movie and managed to get Michael Jackson song on the soundtrack: The reason is explained by Director Simon Wincer during an interview for Slash Film. But what we don’t know is that it was not supposed to be. Every single Michael Jackson Fan knows about “Will You Be There” being on the soundtrack of “Free Willy”.

Free willy 2 film location