It has been a good long while since we’ve had a quality treasure hunt/heist movie coming out of Hollywood. Sure, there were The Mummy movies, the National Treasure flicks, and the ill-advised Matthew McConaughey vehicle Sahara (that was back before the McConaissance), but those hardly qualify as “quality” films. Hopefully that will change with The Secret of the Temple, which writer Dante Harper has been tapped to rewrite for Fox 2000.
The Secret of the Temple is based on an article written by Jake Halpern for New Yorker magazine. It examined the fight between thieves, radicals, and the royal family over treasure vaults supposedly worth over $20 billion dollars that are concealed beneath a temple in the jungles of India. The film itself will be an adventure/heist movie using the article as its basis. I think that means that we should not expect the film to be too true-to-life.
You might know Dante Harper from Edge of Tomorrow – or All You Need is Kill, as it was once known. His script wound up on the 2010 Black List and eventually sold to Warner Brothers for $3 million, becoming the Tom Cruise vehicle that everyone likes so much. But Harper has never been credited on the film, which does not seem quite fair. He’s moved on, though, with both The Secret of the Temple and work on The Last Witch Hunter for Lionsgate.
Harper’s script is going to be a rewrite, though, which means that it might take awhile to get off the ground. There’s as yet no news on what the plot details will actually entail, beyond their basis in the Halpern article. Still, it sounds like a good premise for a Hollywood film, and Harper evidently has a strong imagination, so I think we can hope for the best.
We’ll let you know more information on The Secret of the Temple when it becomes available.
