On November 20, 1983, ABC aired the TV movie The Day After, starring Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, and Steve Guttenberg.
Two decades after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the film depicts a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, showing the devastating aftereffects of the attack and a scary, post-apocalyptic world.
Due to the timeliness of the subject amid the Cold War, the TV movie drew more than 100 million viewers in 39 million households. Despite being accused of sensationalizing nuclear war, it earned 12 Emmy nominations and won two.
It also reportedly helped prevent a nuclear war in real life, at least according to the film’s director Nicholas Meyer.
“It certainly changed one person’s mind on the subject, and that person just happened to be the President of the United States,” he told Yahoo! in 2023. “Ronald Reagan wrote about watching the movie in his memoir. His biographer, who spent three years in the White House, said the only time he ever saw Reagan flip out was after seeing the movie. Ultimately, it sent Reagan into such a tailspin that he signed the [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty], the only treaty that ever resulted in the physical dismantling of nuclear weapons.”
Now, more than 40 years later, it remains one of the highest-rated television films in U.S. history, beating the viewership of Super Bowl XXI and Super Bowl XXVIII. And the anti-war message of the movie is more important than ever, as Meyer revealed he is trying to make a new version.
“And by the way, I’ve tried over the last couple of years, intermittently trying to get a new version of the movie made. A global version,” he explained. “And I’ve been to all the streamers. And nobody wants to do it now any more than they wanted to do it then.”
The film also starred a young John Lithgow and Amy Madigan.
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