From Deep Space to ‘Deep’ Below for Duncan Jones

From Sam Rockwell‘s escape from deep space to an escape from several meters below, Duncan Jones is set to take on a true story (which was fitted into a novel) about WWII submarine wreck survivors as a possible sophomore project. Audiences will get to feast on the Brit director’s directorial debut soon enough – Moon (June 12th release) played extremely well at Sundance and the following festivals after it, effectively positioning the filmmaker has a hot commodity.

Brilliant Films’ Joe Abrams and Rory Gilmartin will produce and are in the early stages of development on the project – they have hired the book’s author Alex Kershaw to adapt Escape From The Deep into a screenplay. I came across the book’s official website, which upon further reading and plenty of “spoilers” made me think of Werner Herzog‘s Rescue Dawn — think survivor tale to the power of 2.

In October 1944, the U.S. Navy submarine Tang was already legendary—it had sunk more enemy ships, rescued more downed airmen, and pulled off more daring surface attacks than any other Allied submarine in the Pacific. And then, on her fifth patrol, disaster struck. The Tang’s last torpedo went out straight on target, but suddenly malfunctioned, turned back in an erratic “circular run,” and struck the Tang with such enormous force that half of the eighty-seven-man crew was killed instantly.

The survivors who went down with the Tang struggled to stay alive in their submerged “iron coffin” one hundred eighty feet beneath the surface, while the Japanese dropped deadly depth charges. As the oxygen depleted, some of the men made a daring ascent through the escape trunk. In the end just nine men of the original crew survived, including four who had been thrown from the bridge when the faulty torpedo hit, and had managed to tread water for over eight hours. But all of them were just beginning a far greater ordeal.