Cannes Film Festival yesterday saw another unveiling. Independence Day director, Roland Emmerich, has officially been confirmed to take the helm of the World War II project, Midway, which he will also co-produce.
The Battle of Midway in the South Pacific was a decisive naval battle in June 1942, six months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Navy defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy near Midway Atoll after U.S. codebreakers were able to pinpoint the time and place of the attack. The damage to the Japanese fleet was so extensive that it never recovered and military historians regard the battle as a turning point in the war.
This won’t be the first time The Battle of Midway has been covered on film, back in 1976, Universal’s epic “Midway,” starring Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Hal Holbrook, Toshiro Mifune, and Robert Mitchum. The film, produced by Walter Mirisch, was a major success with $42 million in box office which was a huge achievement back then.
Emmerich’s version will focus on the stories of the U.S. soldiers and aviators in the battle.
No casting news has been revealed at this time; however, we can say that Wes Tooke wrote the script for the project, which Bona’s Yu Dong will produce with Emmerich, Mark Gordon, Matt Jackson, and Harald Klose.
The Mark Gordon Co. and Emmerich have worked together before on “2012” and “The Day After Tomorrow.” Dong, Midway cements their working relationship. As well as the founder and president-CEO of Bona, having overseen the production of more than 260 films, he too has experience of working with Emmerich in the past when he provided funding for Emmerich’s “Independence Day: Resurgence,” “The Martian,” “Alien: Covenant,” and the upcoming “War for the Planet of the Apes.”
Watch the trailer from the original 1976 movie below, this hasn’t aged well.
