After leaving the Bourne franchise behind, Paul Greengrass made Green Zone (which might as well have been called The Bourne Historical Rewrite) and has been attempting to get his Martin Luther King, Jr film Memphis off the ground with Scott Rudin. As it turns out, Rudin may have something different in mind.
According to Deadline Mogadishu, Greengrass has been offered the directing job for the Somali pirate movie based on Richard Phillips’s memoir “A Captain’s Duty.” The book chronicles his experience as the skipper of the Maersk Alabama, which was taken by Somali pirates. Phillips was held hostage before being rescued by Navy SEALs. Tom Hanks has signed on to star.
This project has been percolating at the script phase for a year and a half, and there’s an honest question about whether the subject matter is all that compelling. At the very least, it’ll be culturally fascinating to see a boom in Navy SEAL movies coming out all around the same time, and Christmas Entertainment also has a Somali pirate movie called Dawn on the Gulf of Aden in development. Otherwise, the main question is how much shakier Greengrass’s camera would be on the open ocean.
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