Everest Climbers to Shoot Footage for Hollywood Movie
By Cameron Walker
January 21, 2004 Director Stephen Daldry is collaborating with Universal Studios and the British production company Working Title Films on a new Hollywood film about the notorious May 1996 disaster on Everest, in which eight people died on the mountain in a single day.
Daldry is best known for his 2003 Academy Award-winning drama, The Hours, starring Nicole Kidman. He also directed the 2000 blockbuster Billy Elliot.
The new Everest film will depict the deadly expedition that was the subject of Jon Krakauer's 1996 award-winning Outside feature story, "Into Thin Air," which subsequently became a worldwide best-selling book. The network television film, Into Thin Air: Death on Everest, also debuted in 1997 and is available on video.
Many of the climbing scenes in Daldry's movie will be shot on Everest by renowned mountaineer and cinematographer David Breashears, who summited the mountain during the deadly 1996 season while filming the IMAX documentary, Everest (released in 1998). Breashears' upcoming project, however, will mark the first convergence of a major Hollywood production with real mountaineering on Everest.
A team of well-known mountaineers will reportedly do the climbing stunt work for Daldry's new movie, but their names have not yet been released.
Breashears, who has already reached the top of Everest four times, will begin filming on the mountain in March. He and the climbing team plan to summit the 29,035-foot mountain during the shoot, according to British co-producer Jon Finn. "[Breashears] will be shooting background views of the top of Everest," he says.
Shots of the actors (whose names are also not yet available) will then be spliced into the Everest scenes using CGI technology.
Daldry and screenwriter Michael Cristofer are developing their script with original research and interviews, rather than basing it upon previously published reports. While the script is still far from finalized, Finn says that they are working with climbers like Breashears, and others who were on the mountain in May 1996, to create the story.
Cristofer won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1977 play The Shadowbox, and has acted in, written, and directed several movies.
The film crew expects to return to Everest during the spring 2005 climbing season to shoot additional scenes on the mountain. No release date for the movie has been announced.
