[Student Reporters] Number 9 in the trend

Jina Yun / <11th, Thacher School>

More movies are pouring in from Hollywood this fall. Interestingly they all have something in common: they all include the number nine in their title. In August the movie "District 9" a science fiction about aliens landing in South Africa was released.

Also "Cloud 9" a German movie about sex and infidelity was also shown. On September 9th (09/09/09) the movie "9" an animated thriller with producer Tim Burton will be released. And finally on November 25th the Broadway musical "Nine" is planning on arriving in theaters.

So why is the number nine such a common theme for movie producers? Some say that the number nine has symbolic meanings. "Nine is considered the number of ending and the number of transformation and completion" says Kay Lagerquist the co-writer of the book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Numerology.

She continues and explains that its significance can also be explained through pregnancy. At the end of 9 months of pregnancy a woman expects her child to be born; thus the number nine also represents birth and fullness.

Interestingly enough the title for the movie "9" was loosely based on these speculations about the number's "mystical values." "In the movie the creatures that the scientists made are numbered from 1 to 9. They're successive versions" explains Shane Acker the writer and the director of the movie "1 being the first and most primitive and 9 being the last and most advanced one the scientist made before he perished."

Also for John August writer and director of the movie "Nine" the number is associated with supernaturalism. "In my movie 'the nines' refers to being very close to being godlike. On a scale of one to 10 10 is God."

Other movie directors have simpler reasons of their usage of the number nine. The director of "Cloud 9" used the number simply because "nine sounds really cool in English." In German the same sound means "no" so the producers used the number 9 to represent the infidelity part of the movie.

In the movie "District 9" the district is an enclosed area that keeps aliens separated from humans. This area alludes to District 6 which was a "whites only" district in South Africa. The directors decided to follow this name except they inversed the number from a 6 to a 9.

According to Lagerquist since the number nine is related to change the reason why it is suddenly being used so frequently is because "we're in a great transformation called the Great Turning. The Earth is changing economically spiritually ecologically and otherwise."