‘Every day, we thought: This is not going to work’: inside the hellish making of Gravity

• After the first test screening of Alfonso Cuarón’s sci-fi picture Gravity in the summer of 2012, its studio Warner Bros were very, very nervous indeed. The film, which had begun production two years before, represented a significant financial investment for a non-franchise picture, costing more than $100 million, and had attracted negative press coverage for what was being described as a tumultuous shoot, after the two lead roles had proved surprisingly difficult to cast.