Oil Rig Disaster to become a ‘Heroic’ Movie

In April of 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico left 11 crewmen dead and caused the largest offshore oil spill in United States history. Less than a year later, Summit Entertainment (on the heels of their new funding agreement) and Participant Media are developing a feature about the BP Oil disaster with backing from Imagenation Abu Dhabi. Scribe Matthew Sand will adapt the story from an December 25, 2010 New York Times article entitled “Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hour” written by David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul. Lorenzo Di Bonaventura (Salt, Transformers, Red) is in talks to produce.

Gist: The NYT article looks into why the Deepwater rig should have weathered the blowout, yet didn’t, and is based on in depth interviews with 21 crew members and written statements from nearly all of the other 94 people who escaped the disaster.

Worth Noting: While an adaption can present an excellent opportunity to thrust those to blame for the disaster into the spotlight, that sentiment doesn’t exactly pack theatres and is usually saved for documentaries. The film will instead focus on the heroics that stemmed from the incident. Summit production president Erik Feig sums it up this way: “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 other’s 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.”

Do We Care?: As a story that topped headlines for most of 2010, this film has the potential to draw a ton of interest. We will have to wait and see if Sand, whose only writing credit to date is Ninja Assassin, can slyly input a James Cameron-esque social commentary into an otherwise “heroic” feature.