The Truman Show is a 1998 American psychological comedy-drama film[2] written and co-produced by Andrew Niccol, and directed by Peter Weir.

All of his friends, family and members of his community are paid actors whose job it is to sustain the illusion and keep Truman unaware about the false world he inhabits.

The movie's supporting cast includes Laura Linney, Ed Harris, Noah Emmerich, Natascha McElhone, Holland Taylor, Paul Giamatti, and Brian Delate.

Truman eventually marries Meryl, but their relationship is stilted and passionless, and he secretly continues to imagine a life with Sylvia and dreams of traveling to Fiji, where he was told she had moved.

Inferring that the city somehow revolves around him, Truman begins questioning his life and asking who he sees as his closest confidants to help him solve the mystery.

Hoping to bring Truman back to a controllable state, Christof reintroduces his father to the show under the guise of him having developed amnesia after the boating accident.

Christof orders a citywide search for Truman and is soon forced to break the production's day-night cycle to optimize the hunt.

Part of the deal called for Niccol to make his directing debut, though Paramount executives felt the estimated $80 million budget would be too high for him.

[7] Directors who were considered after De Palma's departure included Tim Burton, Sam Raimi, Terry Gilliam, David Cronenberg, Barry Sonnenfeld and Steven Spielberg before Peter Weir signed on in early 1995,[10][11] following a recommendation of Niccol.

[20] Carrey brought his own innovations to the role, including the idea for the scene in which Truman declares "this planet Trumania of the Burbank galaxy" to the bathroom mirror.

[10] After Laura Linney was hired to play the actress pretending to be Meryl, Truman's wife, she studied Sears catalogs from the 1950s to develop her character's poses.

[22][23] Its overall look was influenced by television images, particularly commercials: Many shots have characters leaning into the lens with their eyes wide open, and the interior scenes are heavily lit because Weir wanted to remind viewers that "in this world, everything was for sale".

Craig Barron, one of the effects supervisors, said that these digital models did not have to look as detailed and weathered as they normally would in a film because of the artificial look of the entire town, although they did imitate slight blemishes found in the physical buildings.

Ronald Bishop's paper in the Journal of Communication Inquiry suggested The Truman Show showcased the power of the media.

In the spirit of Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony, these films and television programs co-opt our enchantment (and disenchantment) with the media and sell it back to us.

"[6] In her essay "Reading The Truman Show inside out", Simone Knox argues that the film itself tries to blur the objective perspective and the show-within-the-film.

He feels trapped into a familial and social world to which he tries to conform while being unable to entirely identify with it, believing that he has no other choice (other than through the fantasy of fleeing to a far-way island).

[33]For the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, its official poster pays homage to the film and its final scene with their website stating that "Peter Weir and Andrew Niccol's The Truman Show (1998) is a modern reflection of Plato's cave and the decisive scene urges viewers to not only experience the border between reality and its representation but to ponder the power of fiction, between manipulation and catharsis.

Utopian models of the past tended to be full of like-minded individuals who shared much in common, comparable to More's Utopia and real-life groups such as the Shakers and the Oneida Community.

[36][37] Slowly, Truman realises the truth and he, like the figure in the Flammarion Engraving, explores the artificial seam between the sky and the sea, wondering what might lie beyond the torn canvas.

The website's consensus reads: "A funny, tender, and thought-provoking film, The Truman Show is all the more noteworthy for its remarkably prescient vision of runaway celebrity culture and a nation with an insatiable thirst for the private details of ordinary lives.

[55] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The Truman Show is emotionally involving without losing the ability to raise sharp satiric questions as well as get numerous laughs.

[59] Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader wrote, "Undeniably provocative and reasonably entertaining, The Truman Show is one of those high-concept movies whose concept is both clever and dumb.

[31] In 2023, ACMI chronicled the modern societal developments that were predicted in The Truman Show, with writer Anthony Frajman noting "it foretold the rise of reality TV, mass surveillance, social media, influencer marketing and our increasing obsession with celebrity," along with "the 24-hour news cycle, product placement, parasocial relationships, the merging of entertainment and news.

"[84] Journalist Erik Sofje deemed it an eerie coincidence that Big Brother made its debut a year after the film's release, and he also compared the film to the 2003 program The Joe Schmo Show: "Unlike Truman, Matt Gould could see the cameras, but all of the other contestants were paid actors, playing the part of various reality-show stereotypes.

[86] Director Jon M. Chu cited how The Truman Show and its setting influenced the thematic portrayal of the Land of Oz in the 2024 film Wicked, saying, "It helps create this idea of the rebelliousness that this new younger generation are discovering ... You start to see the truth about things that maybe you were taught differently.

"[87] Joel Gold, a psychiatrist at the Bellevue Hospital Center, revealed that by 2008, he had met five patients with schizophrenia (and had heard of another twelve) who believed their lives were reality television shows.

Another came to climb the Statue of Liberty, believing that he would be reunited with his high school girlfriend at the top and finally be released from the show.

In my version of a series, I thought it would be fun, if after Truman walked through the sky, the audience clamored for more (which you sense at the end of the film).

If I set it in New York City, there would be girl living on the Upper East Side, a boy from Harlem, a kid from Chinatown, etc.