Edward Zwick On Heart Of The Sea

Whale attacks ship, uh oh

Edward Zwick On Heart Of The Sea

by Helen O'Hara |
Published on

First of all, let's not get confused: this is not a film about a heart-shaped "blue diamond" that sank with the Titanic, because that was the Heart of the Ocean. The Heart of the Sea is a film about a whaling ship apparently "stalked" and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820, and Edward Zwick is set to direct it.

Sound familiar? That's probably because it was the inspiration for Moby Dick. In this case, the Nantucket whaling ship the Essex was sunk, and its crew marooned at sea for over 90 days. They resorted to cannibalism to survive; only eight of them made it back.

Zwick and his writing partner Marshall Herskovitz wrote the script, based on Nathaniel Philbrick's book about the incident. Production is due to begin later this year.

This is one of two vengeful whale films coming up: Russian director Timur Bekmambetov is follow up Wanted with a new take on Moby Dick. Let's hope that these two films don't do for whales what Jaws did for sharks: whales are basically nice, people! They just don't like having harpoons stuck in them.

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