Most D-Day movies eventually land on the beaches. Pressure stays in the rooms before the invasion, where a weather forecast helped shape command decisions affecting thousands of troops waiting to cross the English Channel.
The Focus Features film, opening in U.S. theaters on May 29, follows the tense 72 hours before the Allied invasion of Normandy, when Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Scottish meteorologist Group Capt. James Stagg faced a decision that could have altered the course of World War II. Focus Features describes the movie as the story of Eisenhower and Stagg weighing whether to launch “the largest and most dangerous seaborne invasion in history,” or risk losing the war altogether.
In interviews with Military.com, actor Andrew Scott, who plays Stagg, director Anthony Maras and actress Kerry Condon, who plays Eisenhower aide Kay Summersby, all said the film’s tension comes from treating D-Day not as an inevitable chapter in history but as a frightening decision made by people who could not know how history would remember them.
“Just his level of integrity,” Scott told Military.com when asked what mattered most in portraying a man carrying that kind of responsibility.
Scott said the challenge was showing who Stagg was while also making the audience care about science, his team, and how a weather forecast could become a matter of life and death.
Stagg’s forecast was no minor technical detail. The Associated Press reported that the real Stagg advised Allied leaders that the weather for the planned June 5, 1944, invasion would be dangerously bad, helping push the attack to June 6. The film, adapted from David Haig’s stage play, focuses on that narrow window before the operation.
In the full exclusive interview, which can be viewed above, Scott said Pressure asks viewers to reconsider something people often treat as background noise.
“We dismiss [weather] as small talk,” Scott said. “But actually it’s not remotely inconsequential.”
He added that weather affects ordinary life, from lunch plans and clothing, all the way up to “the most important military operation in history.”
That idea also connected to the USO’s “Letters Home” project tied to the film, which includes wartime correspondence from Louis “Speedy” Weber, a World War II soldier whose letters were read aloud as part of the film’s rollout. Scott said hearing weather from the perspective of someone on the ground was “incredibly moving.”
A D-Day Film About the Decision Before the Battle
Maras said he was drawn to Pressure because it looked at D-Day from an angle he had not seen dramatized in the usual beach-focused war film.
“I read the play and I was just obsessed from my first read,” Maras told Military.com. He said he was struck by “this idea of the most consequential decision maybe of the war” resting on a weather forecast.
The drama, Maras said, came from the fact that the people involved all wanted the same result but disagreed sharply over how to get there. Generals, soldiers, officers and scientists were working toward victory while clashing over the timing of the largest seaborne invasion in history.
“With this film, we wanted to invite the audience into the war room,” Maras said, describing the story as what happened “beyond the battle before the battle even began.”
For military audiences, Maras said the responsibility was not only about getting uniforms, rooms and history right. He said he wanted the film to be true to “the psychological experiences” of those who made decisions under enormous pressure.
“If you can try and put yourself in the position of someone who has hundreds of thousands of lives immediately hanging on their word, but then millions of lives beyond that, it starts to put those decisions in a different focus,” Maras said.
That was especially true for Eisenhower, played by Academy Award winner Brendan Fraser. Maras said the film tries to look past the familiar image of Eisenhower as a future president and historical figure, to the exhausted commander behind closed doors.
He pointed to Eisenhower drinking “20 cups of coffee” and smoking “six packets of cigarettes” a day as his body was breaking down under the strain. In private, Maras said, Eisenhower had to wonder whether he was making “the biggest mistake” of his life and whether he would be remembered as a failure.
The director said that tension between private hesitation and public command was central to the film.
“He’s got to open the door and go out into those hallways, put on a mask, be confident, be strong, and lead,” Maras said.
Kerry Condon Saw Kay Summersby as Confident, Not Out of Place
Condon’s Kay Summersby gives the film another view of the war room.
Summersby, Eisenhower’s driver and aide, had already lived through her own wartime danger before the events of Pressure, including driving ambulances during the London Blitz.
Condon said that history gave her a physical and emotional entry point to the character.
“The ambulance thing was massive,” Condon told Military.com, saying that kind of work required “skill and calm under pressure” at a time when such a role was not what many people expected from a woman. She described Summersby as courageous, calm and familiar with Eisenhower by the time the film begins, having already worked with him for years.
Condon said she did not want to play Summersby as someone intimidated by rooms full of powerful men.
“I definitely wanted her to feel like she was very confident in those rooms,” Condon said. “She wasn’t out of her depth.”
Her approach was to show Summersby as respected and capable, not as a symbolic “only woman” figure. Condon said the generals understood Eisenhower needed her and that she was good at her job.
A D-Day landing scene from Pressure. Andrew Scott said the film honors the men and boys who were on the beaches by showing how devastating, dangerous and heroic their experience was. (Alex Bailey/Focus Features/STUDIOCANAL © 2026 All Rights Reserved)
For Condon, the film’s most affecting moments came when Pressure uses real D-Day footage. She said seeing the real soldiers brought history back to flesh and fear.
“The reality is that those were real people, and they must have been very scared,” Condon said, adding that she hopes the film makes people think more deeply about war and remember that “the reality of war is that people die. Lots of people die.”
Scott also pointed to the film’s archival footage, saying the remastered images help create a powerful contrast between the war rooms and the men and boys who were actually on the beaches. He said the film honors those troops by showing how “viscerally devastating and dangerous and heroic” their experience was.
Focus Features set the film’s U.S. release for May 29, ahead of the annual D-Day day of remembrance, describing it as a theatrical event tied to one of the most consequential moments in modern history.
Scott described the film as a way to look at the war “with fresh eyes.”
“Sometimes it’s telling the truth but telling it slant,” he said.
About Pressure
Release date: May 29, 2026
Director: Anthony Maras
Writers: David Haig and Anthony Maras
Cast: Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina and Damian Lewis
Studio/distributor: Focus Features
Production companies: Working Title Films and StudioCanal
Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Rating: PG-13 for war violence, bloody images, some strong language and smoking
Genre: Drama / War / History
Premise: Set during the tense 72 hours before D-Day, Pressure follows Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Group Capt. James Stagg as they decide whether to launch the largest seaborne invasion in history or delay and risk losing the war.
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