10 Movies Everyone Thinks Are Based On A True Story (But Aren't)
8. The Poseidon Adventure
Though most disaster movies make it clear they're not based on reality by the sheer stupefying scale of the carnage that unfolds, it becomes easy to believe that more modestly-staged disaster flicks are indeed adapting real catastrophes.
Case in point, 1972's legendary disaster film The Poseidon Adventure - in which the titular luxury liner is capsized by a tsunami, trapping the survivors inside - feels in its bones like a tentpole movie drawn from an actual accident.
Given that there have been countless movies made about the sinking of the Titanic alone over the last century-plus, why wouldn't the SS Poseidon be a real ship that actually got capsized on New Year's Day?
But as it turns out, The Poseidon Adventure was simply adapted from Paul Gallico's fictional 1969 novel of the same name.
The only remotely real basis for the story was a vacation that Gallico went on in 1937, where he was aboard the RMS Queen Mary while it was hit by high waves and turned on its side.
This provided the spark of the idea for the story, yet the boat wasn't capsized nor were any passengers trapped and forced to climb to the "top" of the ship to escape, as in the novel and movie.