It would be fair to say that Gavin Hood received mixed notices for his work on X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Despite having won an Oscar for his South African feature, Tsotsi, neither Rendition and Wolverine have delivered on that early promise.
Now it seems Hood is continuing his push into Hollywood with a currently untitled Alaska-set adventure tale for Walden Media (the family friendly company behind Narnia, amongst others).
Based on Gay and Laney Salisbury’s book, The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic, it’s a true story tale about 20 men and 200 dogs who raced 600 miles across hostile country to blizzard-hit Nome, Alaska with medicine in 1925, after an outbreak of diptheria. They braved temperatures of minus-60 degrees and became famous throughout the US. One of the dogs even got a statue in New York’s Central Park (with his story turned into the animated movie Balto in 1995).
The hope is to start filming this summer, once Hood has completed work on the TV pilot, Breakout Kings.
(Source: THR)