Although John Moore showed promise with Behind Enemy Lines and Flight of the Phoenix, he rather squandered that with The Omen and Max Payne. Since then he’s been having difficult getting any other projects off the ground, despite numerous attempts.
Now it seems he’s had a new idea, with the director telling Deadline that he’s planning a film based on the History Channel documentary series, Ice Road Truckers. Fox actually bought the rights two years ago, but it’s only now with Moore’s pitch that they might have found a way to turn the reality series into a movie.
There’s certainly plenty of scope for drama, as if you haven’t seen the show, it’s in the Deadliest Catch bracket of documentaries about people doing jobs that seem semi-suicidal. In this one its guys driving massive 18-wheeler trucks to remote diamond mines in the north of Canada. However, where they need to go is so inacessible that they can only get there during certain times of the year, taking their huge trucks on a 300-mile ‘road’ which is actual brutally cold Tundra, frozen lakes and other things that might kill you at any moment (although to be fair, the show does incredibly overhype the dangers).
Moore says his ideas is that “It is very much a tough guy movie. Here’s a bunch of characters who tackle problems by getting in there and getting things done. We’ll turn it into a mission movie that harkens back to Towering Inferno, Jaws, or The Guns of Navarone. You got a problem, go solve it.”
Don’t get too excited though, as Moore is yet to make a deal with Fox, although they seem to like his idea.