By Charles Owens
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
PRINCETON — The long-planned follow-up to the 1999 motion picture “October Sky” is in “pre production” and will be filmed in Mercer and McDowell counties if Kevin Sizemore has his way.
Sizemore, an actor and producer who is also a Mercer County native, is collaborating with Homer Hickam to continue the real-life story of the “Rocket Boys” of McDowell County on the big screen.
Sizemore, who just finished filming two movies — “Disconnected” and “Cryptic” in Mercer County — hopes “December Sky” will be his next big project. The movie will be based upon Hickam’s popular “The Coalwood Way” memoir.
The planning for “December Sky” dates all the way back to the pandemic of 2020.
“This really came to fruition more around the Covid times,” Sizemore said. “Covid was horrible for a lot of people. But there were some silver linings for a lot of people as well. And for me, it allowed me to gather a lot of IP on a lot of projects and accumulate those stories. And my wife and I, Gina Lombardi, she’s my producing partner and is phenomenal, so what Gina and I have done is collect a lot of stories that we want to tell, and the next one that we want to tell is the Homer Hickam story which is the prequel. It’s the prequel to October sky, and it’s called December Sky. So I want to bring that one back to West Virginia where it belongs. This is a Christmas story that takes place right before October Sky.”
Sizemore said Hickam was recently in Princeton visiting the two local movie sets.
“Homer’s been on this set,” Sizemore said of “Disconnected.” “He was on the Cryptid set. Homer and I are connected at the hip and I like it that way.”
The setting for the original “October Sky” was West Virginia, and the movie featured local landmarks and names, including Big Creek High School and even a copy of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph that documented the Oct. 4, 1957 launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik. However, the movie itself was filmed in Tennessee. And the school that was used to represent Big Creek High School in the movie was actually a school in Tennessee.
Sizemore said the plan is to film all of “December Sky” in Mercer and McDowell counties.
“Well, we would have to shoot a little bit of it at McDowell, of course, because that’s where it (the story) lives,” Sizemore said. “But a heck of a lot of it is coming to Mercer, all right. We’re bringing it home. My job and my goals are to bring as many projects to Mercer County and or the state of West Virginia as I possibly can bring and right now we’re putting together a film fund of these projects such as Homer’s and the other seven projects that I have and I want to come home. I want to bring them home and I want to put money into Mercer County and into the state of West Virginia.”
Hickam, the author of the original Coalwood memoirs, said “December Sky” is neither a prequel or a sequel to “October Sky.”
“The Coalwood Way was a series of stories that took place my last winter and Christmas in Coalwood that I took out of Rocket Boys because I felt it took the story off in another direction that wasn’t right for the original memoir,” Hickam said. “When Rocket Boys was a big success, I returned to those stories to fashion what became The Coalwood Way and now December Sky. As such, it isn’t a prequel or a sequel but what I call an equal since it takes place during the same time as the original memoir.”
Hickam said Sizemore suggested he adapt “The Coalwood Way” into a movie screenplay which he did, retitling it “December Sky” as an obvious reference to “October Sky.”
“The screenplay has received many positive reactions from film producers,” Hickam said. “We are in the midst of pre-production, which means trying to raise the funds to make the film which we intend to make entirely in West Virginia. In this, we are being helped as much as possible by Dave Lavender who heads up the West Virginia Film Office.”
In the years since its original theatrical release, “October Sky” has been seen by thousands of school children at schools across the nation. Hickam believes there is a strong demand for a second movie.
“We naturally think there is a hunger for another film based on the October Sky characters, a film that still has an enormous appeal around the world,” Hickam said. “Ultimately, however, a quality movie takes financial supporters and that’s where we are now, looking for those fine folks! Kevin would act as the producer on the film and perhaps act in it as well.”
Hickam said at its core “December Sky” is a Christmas story set in the Coalwood community.
“In other words, in December Sky, movie goers would see not only the Rocket Boys again but this time better understand the noble and stoic people of West Virginia who loved and supported them,” Hickam said.
Hickam, who worked as a paperboy for the Bluefield Daily Telegraph before he began launching rockets at the old Big Creek High School, said that youthful newspaper experience helped to form the “prototype” for the villain in “The Coalwood Way.”
“When I knocked on his door to get paid for the newspaper, it was a pretty frightening time for a kid as he was a scary fellow who really didn’t want to pay,” Hickam said of one of his customers at the time. “Sometimes, he put me off, telling me to come back later, but Mom said I still had to give him a paper. When he paid, it was with a scowl and coin by coin, reluctantly pinched from a tobacco pouch.”
In the original “October Sky” film, and in real life, it was the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957, that inspired Hickam and his fellow Rocket Boys to pursue their dreams of rocketry and science. Hickam later worked as an engineer for NASA.
In the first movie, actor Jake Gyllenhaal (“Spiderman: Far from Home,” “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time,” “The Day After Tomorrow”) portrayed Hickam. A team with Universal Studios visited the Daily Telegraph as part of its research and planning for that movie.
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