Julie Ford William Sadler as Bill 'Wild Bill' Overbeck Jeffrey DeMunn as Paul Wick James Pickens, Jr. as Ben Stevens Beau Bridges as Bud Nesbitt Peter Onorati as Gary Hackman Don Lake as Flight Surgeon Blake Nelson Boyd as Gordon A. Peacock Shelley Duvall as Mrs. Randall, Fred's Mother (uncredited) Gailard Sartain as Mr. Randall, Fred's Father (uncredited) Production The film was shot on location at the Lake Point Plaza in Sugar Land, Texas in a recently constructed building for Fluor Corporation. The building exterior was dressed with NASA signage to give the appearance of shooting at the actual NASA site. The movie was also filmed in Moab, Utah for the scenes on the surface on Mars. The filmmakers spent nine weeks at the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas, shooting at the famous Rocket Park, the gargantuan Building 9 that houses all of the spacecraft mock-ups for the ongoing shuttle missions, and Building 32, which houses the world's largest thermal vacuum chamber and simulates all conditions of outer space (except zero gravity). To prepare for their roles as astronauts, the three stars attended the U.S. Space Camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, riding in simulators and participating in other activities. Filming started on September 16, 1996 and wrapped up on November 25, 1996. Release Box office RocketMan opened in theaters on October 10, 1997. It came in at #6 during its opening weekend, grossing $4,472,937. The film's second weekend saw a -33.2% change in attendance, dropping to #7 at the box office, with a gross of $2,987,753. It would drop to #8 at the box office the following weekend with a gross of only $2,074,078. The film dropped out of the top ten during its fourth weekend, coming in at eleventh place with a gross of $1,454,836. It would fail to regain a top ten spot at the box office through the remainder of its theatrical run. By the end of its theatrical run, the film had taken in $15,448,043 in total domestic gross. Home media The film was one of the first Disney titles released on DVD (through a different distribution company, as Disney was not supporting DVD at the time) and soon went out-of-print. In April 2006, the Disney Movie Club began distributing a DVD re-release. On 2018 February 27 Disney Movie Club began distributing a blu-ray 20th anniversary edition re-release. Reception