Tom Hanks has had some success with real-life stories, and, along with director Paul Greengrass (also no stranger to truth-based filmmaking), will be hoping for great things from his latest, Captain Phillips.
When Somali pirates hijacked his ship, the Maersk Alabama, in 2009, Captain Richard Phillips and some of his crew were taken hostage and faced real peril on the sea.
How Phillips and co dealt with their captivity became the subject of national headlines and made the captain something of a hero, landing a book deal and plenty of TV appearances.
Now, Greengrass, working with writer Billy Ray, has turned that story into his next taut, based-on-reality thriller. After some false starts, filming kicked off last year in several US locations, in the Mediterranean, Malta, Morocco and here in the UK, with newcomers playing the pirates and Catherine Keener, Max Martini and John Magro also aboard the cast.
For more on the movie, check out our exclusive chat with Greengrass, which can still be found in the JJ Abrams issue of Empire on the iPad.
Captain Phillips docks here on October 11.