Puttnam was persuaded to produce the Greenpeace environmental advocacy thriller in part because of his own activism. “I took the world’s first climate change bill (through the British Parliament), and I’m very proud of that,” says the Londoner who was made a peer in 1997 and sits on the Labour benches of the House of Lords. “I was asked for advice about the film, and then found myself getting more and more involved.”
If it’s his swan song, it marks a fitting end to a charmed career that began in advertising in the ’60s and continued with the production of such flamboyant projects as Ken Russell’s “Mahler” and “Lisztomania” in the early ’70s. “I had this extraordinary run, right the way through ‘The Mission’ in ’86,” he recalls. “During that time I managed to produce some 25 films.”