You may already have seen one image from Ron Howard’s seagoing drama In The Heart Of The Sea, which featured as part of the preview in the October issue of Empire. Now some new pictures from the film are online via USA Today.
In The Heart Of The Sea follows the traumatic real-life struggle endured by the men of Nantucket whaling ship the Essex, which was destroyed by an angry sperm whale in 1820.
Stranded in a lifeboat thousands of miles from home, 20 of the surviving crew (their number included the captain and first officer) at first planned to make for an isolated tropical island, but the idea was rejected because of rumours of flesh-eating savages. The resulting delay in their rescue led to them becoming cannibals to survive. Irony!
It’s the harrowing real-life story that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. "It's wild," Howard tells the paper. "It's what attracted Meville to this story – it's man vs. nature in the most immediate, intense way."
Chris Hemsworth plays first mate Owen Chase, who has to take command. "There's lot of a guys who are completely new to it, fresh off the land and off the boat," Hemsworth says. "He's trying to set the tone and lay down the law that the simplest mistake out here could sink the ship. He doesn't have time to educate them in any great detail. It's hard and fast." For more from Hemsworth and Howard, head to USA Today’s site.
With seasickness competing with queasiness from restricted diets to give the actors a starved look, it sounds like it was a tough shoot. Let’s hope it was all worth the effort when In The **Heart Of The Sea **docks in UK cinemas on March 13 next year.