While RED and R.I.P.D. helmer Robert Schwentke was said to be eyeing the project last year, The Hollywood Reporter brings word that Walt Disney Pictures is looking at setting Craig Gillespie (the man behind their upcoming true sports story Million Dollar Arm) to direct the period coast guard rescue story The Finest Hours. What’s more, they’re looking at setting Star Trek’s Chris Pine to headline.
The film, adapted by Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson, is based on the book by Casey Sherman and Michael J. Touglas, officially described as follows:
In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor’easter in years. As the weather wreaked havoc on land, the freezing Atlantic became a wind-whipped zone of peril, setting the stage for one of the most heroic rescue stories ever lived.
In the early hours of Monday, February 18, while the storm raged, two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, found themselves in the same horrifying predicament. Built with “dirty steel,” and not prepared to withstand such ferocious seas, both tankers split in two, leaving the dozens of men on board utterly at the Atlantic’s mercy. The Finest Hours is the gripping, true story of the valiant attempt to rescue the souls huddling inside the broken halves of the two ships.
The spellbinding tale is overflowing with breathtaking scenes, as boats capsize, bows and sterns crash into one another, and men hurl themselves into the raging sea in their terrifying battle for survival.
Not all of the eighty-four men caught at sea in the midst of that brutal storm survived, but considering the odds, it’s a miracle—and a testament to their bravery—that any came home to tell their tales at all.
Jim Whitaker is attached to produce.
