All right… So the actual, pesky based-on-real-life details of the film will not actually see Tom Hanks battling Jack Sparrow, Blackbeard or any other more stylised pirates. But he may well interact with their modern-day equivalents as he’s just attached himself to Sony’s take on the experiences of Captain Richard Phillips.
If he ends up in the film, Hanks would play Phillips, whose ship, the cargo vessel Maersk Alabama, was hijacked by Somali pirates in April 2009. Rather than see his crew harmed, Phillips bravely agreed to become a hostage and spent three perilous days alone with his captors in a small lifeboat. He was rescued by a team of Navy SEALs in a raid that left three pirates dead.
Phillips turned his account of the incident into a book – A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs and Dangerous Days at Sea, which he wrote with Stephan Talty. Now, after becoming something of a pop cultural icon across the pond (he even got spoofed by South Park), Phillips’ tale has been optioned by The Social Network’s producers Scott Rudin, Michael De Luca, Dana Brunetti and Kevin Spacey, who hired Billy Ray to write a draft of the script and snagged Hanks’ interest based on that.
There’s no director attached yet, but you just know they’re going to be chasing awards with this one.