"... the Mosquito Coast, which extends from Puerto Barrios in Guatemala to Colon in Panama. It is wild and looks the perfect setting for the story of castaways..."

Allie Fox (Harrison Ford) is possessed by a singular dream: to escape with his family to a pure, untainted world, a jungle utopia far from the corrupting influences of the modern world.

A fiercely independent man, Allie is fed up with the America of fast food, television, pollution, phony evangelicism and crime. Packing up his wife, two sons and twin daughters, he boards a freighter bound for the Mosquito Coast.

"Goodbye, America," says Allie, "and have a nice day!"

Based on Paul Theroux's best-selling novel, "The Mosquito Coast" is the exhilarating adventure story of how a family's quest for paradise becomes a terrifying fight for survival. A Jerome Hellman production for the Saul Zaentz Company, it has been directed by Peter Weir and stars Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, River Phoenix, Conrad Roberts, Andre Gregory, and Martha Plimpton. Paul Schrader adapted the screenplay from Theroux's novel. Jerome Hellman was the producer and Saul Zaentz the executive producer of the Warner Bros. release.

"The Mosquito Coast" reunites Harrison Ford with director Peter Weir after "Witness," for which they both received Academy Award nominations, and offers both artists an even broader canvas on which to display their prodigious talents. For Ford in particular, "The Mosquito Coast" provides his most challenging dramatic role to date. Audiences will see him as they have never before seen him, stripped of the romantic trappings of his previous portrayals.

Other members of "The Mosquito Coast" team who received Academy nominations for "Witness" include director of photography John Seale, composer Maurice Jarre, and editor Thom Noble, who won the coveted award.

Producer Jerome Hellman ("Coming Home," "Midnight Cowboy") has been committed to bringing "The Mosquito Coast" to the screen since 1982, when he read Theroux's novel and personally purchased the film rights shortly after it was published. "Very rarely do you read something that gets you really excited," says Hellman. "I felt that it could make a wonderful movie if the right people were involved."

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