The (most) recent adaptation of Walter Mitty, starring Ben Stiller as a magazine photo editor, featured a number of iconic-looking LIFE magazine covers... but almost none of them were real, which seems fitting. They did all feature some stunning images from the magazine's expansive archives. You can click through for a look at some of the false covers used in the movie, often prominently displayed in the background.
LIFE.com offers a little bit of insight into the covers:
"In this rendition of the tale, Stiller plays a photo editor at LIFE magazine—still publishing, thanks to the magic of the movies, four decades after it shuttered in 1972— and much of the film is set in the meticulously recreated offices of the storied weekly. In those offices, meanwhile, hang poster-sized versions of LIFE magazine covers through the years. The covers are stirring, iconic—and, for the most part, they’re fake."
The photos, however, are real LIFE images. Jeff Mann, the production designer on the film, and Stiller himself "felt that the photos they chose to use as covers, from the literally millions of pictures in LIFE’s archive, had to somehow 'convey the influence of LIFE magazine, while at the same time helping to move our story along. It was a fabulous problem, and one we had a lot of fun working to solve.'”
