Few but the most intransigently ignorant will contest that the corporate Hollywood machine is in possession of few moral or artistic scruples. Vast tragedies, world changing physical, economic and social events are all greedily seized upon as occasions for their institutionalised avarice. Like a flock of hungry vultures driven into frenzy by the smell of death Hollywood has cheerfully knocked off a string of recent films directly- or indirectly- dealing with its two most severe recent domestic disasters, September 11th and Hurricane Katrina. And now, with the most tasteless option agreement in many years, Summit Entertainment and Participant Media have sealed the hat-trick with
Deepwater Horizons Final Hour.
EW say the production companies have bought the rights to
an article of the same name by New York Times journalists
David Barstow, David Rohde and
Stephanie Saul, which depicted the events leading up to and immediately after the Gulf of Mexico tragedy last year, which subsequently went to become one of the greatest environmental disasters in memory. The script is to be written by
Matthew Sand of Ninja Assassin fame and will be produced in association with Imagenation Abu Dhabi, with the hope that
Lorenzo Di Bonaventura (Transformers) will also come on board. In a press statement Summit President, Erik Feig wrote:
This film will portray the great heroism that took place last year on the Deepwater Horizon rig and how colleagues so courageously came to each others aide. This piece in The New York Times evoked the raw emotion these brave men experienced and endured throughout the tragedy that took place in April of last year and we hope to evoke the same emotions for our audience with this movie.
Its certainly the sort of flag-waving heroism that always plays well to American audiences, so expect both the budget and box-office receipts to be thoroughly vast irrespective of any allusion to quality.