Who knew Julia Roberts liked mountains? Well, apparently she does, as it’s been announced she’s producing a film through her Red Om production company about George Mallory’s attempt to scale Everest in 1924.
As you may remember, the first successful climb to the peak was by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, which would suggest the Mallory movie isn’t going to have a particularly happy ending. Indeed it almost certainly won’t, as after famously proclaiming that the reason he wanted to climb the world’s highest mountain was ‘Because it’s there’, he was last seen a few hundred metres from the summit. No one knows for sure whether he actually made it to the top (although I’d imagine the film will say he did), but it is known he never came back, with his body only discovered 75 years later in 1999, preserved in the ice.
Variety reports that Elizabeth director Shekhar Kapur is onboard to direct the film, which won’t just follow Mallory up the mountain, but also examine how beforehand it became an increasing obsession that threatened to tear apart his marriage. No cast has yet been announced, although don’t be shocked if it turns out Roberts is playing Mallory’s wife.