It looked for a while as though romantic survival drama The Mountain Between Us had finally landed on a leading pair, with Charlie Hunnam a done deal and Rosamund Pike in talks to co-star. Now, they’re both no longer attached and the script is getting yet another re-write from Rogue One’s Chris Weitz.
The screenplay has seen work from J. Mills Goodloe and Scott Frank, among others, and adapts Charles Martin’s eponymous novel, which finds two strangers surviving a plane crash in the Colorado woods and braving the elements together. The experience draws them closer and they fall in love. Hunnam was to have played Ben Trace, a doctor and climbing fanatic who helps injured writer Ashley as they make their way down a mountain in unforgiving weather.
Paradise Now’s Hany Abu-Assad is still the man to direct this one, which has been through a few casting fluctuations already: Michael Fassbender and Margot Robbie were in talks previously. Now Fox 2000 is hoping that Weitz can knock the screenplay into shape ready for a shifted shooting schedule in the middle of next year somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, where the conditions will be suitably wintry. There’s a chance Hunnam and Pike could come back, but for now the movie is without a cast as the filmmakers wait for the new script.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (to give it its somewhat awkward full title), is still shooting under the director of Gareth Edwards and will be out on December 16, so less than a year and a week to wait folks!