There is usually a grace period following a disaster in which filmmakers allow the dust to settle before typing the words ‘based on a true story’.
After 9/11, for example, Paul Greengrass and Oliver Stone each waited five years before releasing United 93 and World Trade Center respectively – similarly any onscreen dramatisation surrounding the death of Princess Diana was avoided until 2006’s The Queen.
For the Chilean miners trapped, however, there is no such waiting game. Indeed, they are not even out of their Hellish situation as the movie – tentatively titled The 33 after the number of miners trapped – enters pre-production.
Showing his sensitive side, director Rodrigo Ortuzar has opened up to AFP (via Bleeding Cool) regarding his reasons behind the project.
We have to wait for the ending, but what’s already happened up to now is incredible… There’s such a great story to tell here. My idea is to craft a story focusing on this confinement and at the same time on the rebirth the miners will go through once they come to the surface.
Not wanting to interfere with the rescue attempts, of course, the director continues.
We’re filming at the camp as a way of observing what goes on there so we can recreate it later, we want to mix fiction with reality.
With estimations pointing at another three or four months before their drilling apparatus can create a hole wide enough to free the miners currently trapped 2,300 feet below ground, the project is slated for a 2012 release – the director managing to somehow find a silver lining (“We’ve got a great opportunity to create and develop a script during that time”).
Discontent with prepping one disaster, the director of 2008’s All Inclusive also plans to prep another reality-based film regarding the earthquake and tsunami which devastated Chili on February 12.
Stay tuned for more details – although whether we or BBC News will have the story first it is impossible to say.
