Eastern Connecticut is lucky to have a treasure trove of great movies that celebrate the region, its history and culture.

And more are in the pipeline.

We are the submarine capital of the world, and some of that submarine know-how has seeped into submarine stories on film, most notably the successful 1990 thriller "Hunt for Red October."

The movie, starring Sean Connery as a renegade captain of a Russian missile submarine during the Cold War, eventually grossed $200 million and probably made it easier for Connecticut politicians to sell America on big submarine budgets.

Who would have thought, back when "Mystic Pizza" was being filmed around Westerly, Stonington, Mystic and Noank in the late 1980s, that one of the leads, a then-obscure Julia Roberts, would become a genuine American movie star, a career born here.

I wonder, when I see people taking pictures today of the pizza shop in Mystic, more than 25 years after the film was released, whether they are Julia Roberts' groupies or people who still feel moved by the warm-hearted coming-of-age story.

"Hope Springs" in 2011 also captured some of our shoreline charms, though Stonington borough becomes the fictional Maine town Great Hope Springs in the movie. The lead actors — Steve Carrell, Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep — were all stars before the filming began here.

Steven Spielberg's 1997 historical drama "Amistad" helped set the stage for Connecticut's building of a recreated schooner Amistad at Mystic Seaport.

I would guess that when people visit Amistad this summer in New London, where it will be moored for the season, many will recall the story from the way it was taught in Spielberg's successful movie.

Movie director Ron Howard visited the whaling ship Charles W. Morgan at Mystic Seaport when he was planning to make a film from Nathaniel Philbrick's excellent "In the Heart of the Sea," a 2000 National Book Award winner.

"In the Heart of the Sea" tells the story of the whaling ship Essex, which, after leaving Nantucket in 1819, was capsized by a whale in the South Pacific — a true story that may have been the basis for Herman Melville's "Moby Dick."

Survivors spent 90 days adrift after the Essex was lost. Some resorted to cannibalism. Eight survived.

The trailer for the movie, which is finished, still says it will be released in March 2015. But in fact a December release is planned.

The scenes at sea were shot around the Canary Islands. Crew members complained a lot about the restrictive diets they were made to follow, to look like shipwreck survivors.

There is a tremendous scene in the trailer of the great whale sinking the Essex. Other scenes, of whaleboats among breaching whales, might remind some of the Morgan's visit to whaling grounds off Cape Cod last summer.

Howard and executives at the studio have suggested they think the movie will do better in the holiday season, when audience numbers spiked last year.

As much as I would like to see the movie sooner, I suspect the delay is because there are high expectations for it. The December release also will help raise its profile going into awards season.

The longer wait might also make the movie seem fresher by the time Mystic Seaport opens its new exhibit building in 2016, a space that will allow the museum to focus more space on material from its substantial whaling collection.

Another Hollywood production that could have an impact here in 2016 is "The Finest Hours" about the rescue of survivors from two tankers that split apart in a storm off Cape Cod in 1952.

The dramatic Coast Guard rescue from a station in Chatham, Mass., was a remarkably heroic mission. The motorized lifeboat used in the rescue was actually in New London recently, for a ceremony marking the establishment of the National Coast Guard Museum here.

It would be nice if they would put donation cups for the new museum in the rear of theaters when the movie opens.

It's hard to imagine who would not donate to a museum celebrating the heroism of the Coast Guard after watching a movie about the brave men who climbed into that little boat and headed out into the teeth of a storm, risking their lives to rescue others, because that's what they do.

This is the opinion of David Collins

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsct