The Descendants

Honolulu-based attorney Matthew "Matt" King is the sole trustee of a trust of 25,000 acres (100 km²) of pristine land on Kauai owned by his extended family. The land has great monetary value, but is also a family legacy. While Matt has ably managed his own finances, most of his cousins have squandered their inheritances. With the trust expiring in seven years due to the rule against perpetuities, the King clan is pressuring Matt to sell the land for hundreds of millions of dollars. Amidst these discussions, a boating accident renders Matt's wife, Elizabeth, comatose. With Elizabeth hospitalized, Matt is forced to cope with his two troubled daughters, 10-year-old Scottie, who seeks attention by bullying other children, and 17-year-old Alex, who has a history of substance abuse and goes to a private boarding school on the Big Island. Elizabeth's coma is determined irreversible and her living will directs all life support be discontinued. When Matt tells Alex, she reveals that Elizabeth was having an affair, which had caused a major rift between mother and daughter.

Close family friends, Kai and Mark Mitchell, tell Matt that Elizabeth was unhappy and loved Brian Speer, a local real estate agent, and had planned to ask Matt for a divorce. After Matt informs friends about Elizabeth's condition so they can say goodbye, he decides Brian should also be informed. He and the girls, along with Alex's slacker friend Sid, travel to Kauai to find Brian. While there, Matt's cousin, Hugh, mentions that Brian is brother-in-law to Don Holitzer, the developer to whom the majority of the family wants to sell the land. Brian stands to make a small fortune from sales commissions for the properties that will be developed on the land. Matt and his daughters find Brian vacationing with his family at an oceanside cabin, where Matt privately confronts Brian and tells him Elizabeth is dying, and offers him an opportunity to say goodbye. Matt asks Brian if Elizabeth loved him, and he says she did, but he only considered her a fling and still loves his wife. Brian apologizes for the pain he caused and asks Matt to say nothing to his wife.

Frustrated and fragile from recent events, Matt asks the doctor to explain Elizabeth's inevitable death to Scottie. Elizabeth's father, Scott, berates Matt and blames him for her accident, arguing that Elizabeth was a "faithful, devoted wife" and that Matt should have sold his land earlier so that she could afford to buy her own (safer) boat or indulge in safer hobbies such as shopping sprees. Matt declines to argue with Scott in order to withhold the truth of his wife's affair, but Sid and Alex stand up for Matt and defend his handling of the family's tragedy. At the King family meeting, Matt overrules his cousins' majority, preferring to keep the land and find a workaround the rule against perpetuities. Shocked, Hugh warns Matt that the family will take legal action, but Matt is undeterred.

After learning about Brian's affair, his wife, Julie, comes to the hospital. She tearfully tells a comatose Elizabeth that she wants to hate her for "trying to destroy" her family, but must forgive her to find peace. Matt comes to terms with Elizabeth's infidelity and impending death. He kisses her goodbye, followed by Alex and Scottie. They scatter Elizabeth's ashes in the ocean off Waikiki.

Later, Matt, Scottie and Alex are at home eating ice cream and watching the documentary March of the Penguins, snuggling under a quilt that was on Elizabeth's hospital bed.

The film began its on-location shoot in Hawaii on March 15, 2010.^[8] Most of the film was shot in Honolulu and around Hanalei Bay.^[9] The location used as Matt King's house lacked the banyan tree described in the book; the filmmakers solved the issue by transplanting a banyan.^[9] For the scene where the King family drives up to a ridge to look over their land, the film used a 3,000-acre (1,200 ha) private cattle ranch on the south shore of Kauai, Kipu Ranch. Kaui Hart Hemmings, the author of the novel on which the movie was based, had a cameo as Matt King's secretary.

The private boarding school attended by Alex King was depicted as Mid-Pacific Institute, which is in Honolulu, Oʻahu. Kaui Hart Hemmings stated that Hawaii Preparatory Academy, which is located in Kamuela, Hawaiʻi (the Big Island), was the inspiration for the private boarding school.^[10]

Postproduction began on June 14, and continued into February 2011.^[11] The film was screened at the Telluride, Toronto^[12] and New York film festivals and was originally scheduled to have a limited release on December 16, 2011, but was moved to November 23, 2011,^[13] and then November 18, 2011.^[1][14]

The soundtrack uses Hawaiian music, featuring artists including Gabby Pahinui, Ray Kane, Keola Beamer, Lena Machado, Sonny Chillingworth, Jeff Peterson, Makana, Dennis Kamakahi, and Danny Carvalho. It was released by Sony Classical Records on November 15.^[15]