<Tr> <Th> Box office </Th> <Td> $118 million </Td> </Tr> <P> Message in a Bottle is a 1999 American romantic drama film directed by Luis Mandoki and based on Nicholas Sparks' 1998 novel of the same name . It stars Kevin Costner, Robin Wright and Paul Newman, and was filmed in Maine, Chicago and Wilmington, North Carolina . The film was released on February 12, 1999 by Warner Bros . </P> <P> Theresa Osborne, a former reporter, works as a researcher for the Chicago Tribune . On a trip to Cape Cod, she finds a mysterious, intriguing and typed love letter in a bottle in the sand, addressed to Catherine . She is fascinated by it and shows it to her colleagues . They print it in their newspaper without the knowledge of Theresa and get numerous responses . One of the response contains an attached letter which was addressed to the same person and written in the same tone . Later, they receive another letter of the same kind from one of the readers which was not addressed to Catherine, but typed on the same notepad . Eventually, they track him down with the help of the typewriter and the notepad used . His name is Garrett Blake and he lives quietly on the Outer Banks of North Carolina near his father, Dodge . </P> <P> Theresa goes to Outer Banks to research it further but when she meets him, they are attracted to each other and start becoming better acquainted . She tries to tell him about the original purpose of her visit but fears that she might lose him and postpones it . Along with the literal distance between them--they live hundreds of miles apart--there is another problem: Garrett cannot quite forgive Catherine for dying and leaving him . </P>

Where did message in a bottle take place