Lone Survivor star Eric Bana is prized to take control of a tragic catastrophe for Disney’s The Finest Hours. The adaptation continues to acquire an impressive cast for this real-life tale of an ocean rescue mission.
The incident on which the movie is based concerns the heroic efforts of the US Coast Guard, after two oil tankers are caught in a blizzard off the coast of Cape Cod in 1952. The tankers were so severely damaged that they each split in half. The Finest Hours will focus on the human angle of the disaster.
Chris Pine and Casey Affleck have long-since been attached to headline the pic, with Ben Foster, Rachel Brosnahan and Kyle Gallner all in supporting roles. Bana will now complement that cast, as he’s set to play “Daniel Cluff, the deeply respected Coast Guard warrant officer and point supervisor to Bernie (Pine). Cluff orders Bernie to set out on the dangerous rescue mission despite his wife’s wishes.”
The Australian actor most recently appeared in Scott Derrickson’s Deliver Us From Evil, and is currently in negotiations to appear in The Secret Scripture. He’s a cracking choice to have on board as a warrant officer as he’s never given enough gritty roles, in this writer’s opinion at least.
Million Dollar Arm helmer Craig Gillespie is directing The Finest Hours from a script by The Fighter scribes Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson. Check out the synopsis for the novel, The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Most Daring Sea Rescue below, and let us know what you think of Bana joining the project.
In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor’easter in years. As the weather wreaked havoc on land, the freezing Atlantic became a wind-whipped zone of peril, setting the stage for one of the most heroic rescue stories ever lived.
In the early hours of Monday, February 18, while the storm raged, two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, found themselves in the same horrifying predicament. Built with “dirty steel,” and not prepared to withstand such ferocious seas, both tankers split in two, leaving the dozens of men on board utterly at the Atlantic’s mercy. The Finest Hours is the gripping, true story of the valiant attempt to rescue the souls huddling inside the broken halves of the two ships.
The spellbinding tale is overflowing with breathtaking scenes, as boats capsize, bows and sterns crash into one another, and men hurl themselves into the raging sea in their terrifying battle for survival.
Not all of the eighty-four men caught at sea in the midst of that brutal storm survived, but considering the odds, it’s a miracle—and a testament to their bravery—that any came home to tell their tales at all.
