Jon Turteltaub, director of the National Treasure movies and the upcoming The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, looks like he’s planning something a little less frenetic and conspiracy-laden for his next outing. Variety reports that he’s signed up to make a movie about the origins of the Greenpeace movement.
Sadly Turteltaub’s film won’t have Nicolas Cage running around revealing that Greenpeace made up Global Warming and the hole in the ozone layer, so that they could hide their fabulous treasure under Washington DC. Instead it’ll take place in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and tell the story of Greenpeace founders Bob Hunter and Rex Wyler.
Initially the duo led a small group of disparate but passionate people, who went around trying to disrupt nuclear bomb tests, whaling ships and seal culls. From this hands-on but small-scale action grew an international movement and one of the biggest environmental organisations on the planet.
The film, which has the co-operation of Greenpeace (which may suggest it won’t be entirely objective), will be based on two books about the early days of the movement, ‘Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World’ and ‘Warriors of the Rainbow: A Chronicle of the Greenpeace Movement’. The producers are currently in early talks with writer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing), to script the movie.
While there’s always the danger that the film could be one long environmental message rather than an entertaining movie, the producers seem to have realised this. Part of the reason they’ve hired Turteltaub is because of his track record making big adventure films. As the producers say, “we’ve found that the best way to reach people’s hearts and minds is through entertainment”. So hopefully we’ll end up with an interesting and exicting film, which also gently prods people to remember not to harpoon any whales on their way to work, or hit seal pups on the head during their days off.
And with Turteltaub and Nice Cage having a bit of a bromance at the moment, what’s the betting the actor ends up playing one of the Greenpeace founders?