Following the Oscar winning success of Slumdog Millionaire, there’s been a lot of speculation about what movie Danny Boyle will direct next. Although there’s been a few movies in contention, including a return to India for an adaptation of Maximum City: Bombay Lost & Found by Suketa Mehta, the other possibility that’s figured highly is a true story mountaineering drama about Aron Ralston.
Variety reports that it’s the latter project that Boyle has now firmed up plans for, which is going under the title, 127 Hours.
Ralston isn’t your typical mountaineering hero, as his main claim to fame is having got his right arm trapped under a boulder in Utah in 2003. He spent five days trying to extricate himself, before running out of water, trying to drink his own urine and videotaping goodbyes to his family.
He then realised there was only one way to survive and so he did the unthinkable. Using a dull blade and some pliers that were part of a cheap multi-use tool he had with him, he chopped chop his own arm off, before rappeling down a 65ft sheer cliff and hiking out of the canyon. Despite his experience, he still climbs mountain and has plans to scale Everest next year.
It doesn’t exactly sound like the jolliest of movies, and seeing as the main character is alone for much of the time, unable to movie and slowly dying, it’ll be interesting to see how Boyle can keep film moving for its entire running time. He’s already written a treatment for the film and Simon Beaufoy, who wrote the screeplay for Slumdog, is in talks to script the movie.
The director is now looking for someone to play Ralston, which will be a tough assignment seeing as they’ve got to pretty much carry the whole film alone. Boyle hopes to shoot the film early next year, for a late 2010 release.
It looks like we’ll just have to prepare to wince a lot when the film comes out.