Update: “Everybody Loves Whales”
An update on a project I posted on here on May 7, 2009:
Warner Bros. buys based on real life story “Everybody Loves Whales” from writers Jack Amiel and Michael Begler:
The script tells the story of three California gray whales who were found trapped under the ice of the Arctic Circle in October 1988. The subsequent rescue attempt became a huge global event, as scores of journalists converged on the nearby Eskimo town of Barrow, Alaska, and the U.S. and Soviet government enjoyed a rare moment of collaboration.
The two-week drama played out at a time of geopolitical change, with Mikhail Gorbachev in the midst of his glasnost initiative and Ronald Reagan preparing to leave office after his second term. In addition to the rescue attempt, Amiel and Begler’s script centers on a love story between a nonprofit aid worker and a journalist.
Good news for Amiel & Begler as their movie is cast and got a greenlight. Per Deadline.com:
Universal Pictures has given the green light to Whales, setting John Krasinski to join Drew Barrymore in the Ken Kwapis-directed fact-based film about the 1988 rescue of a trio of California gray whales that got trapped under the ice of the Arctic Circle.
Krasinski will play a small town newspaper reporter who breaks the story. Barrymore plays a Greenpeace activist, and they turn the potential tragedy into an international story. The incident created a temporary Cold War thaw as President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev found a common cause. They interceded to save the whales. The film is produced by Anonymous Content’s Steve Golin and Michael Sugar and Working Title’s Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Liza Chasin.
Notice something different? Warner Bros. bought the spec, but now Universal is producing the movie. Sure there’s a story there. Also evidently the title has been changed to Whales.
On that original post about a year ago, one of the writers Jack Amiel was kind enough to provide some background on the project in comments:
I was surfing to see what people were saying about the script, and stumbled across this site. For the record, Michael and I wrote the script (at the time titled “Whales on Ice”) almost ten years ago, and it has been sitting on a shelf for a pretty long time. It’s based on a wonderful book by Tom Rose about the event. We wrote the screenplay as a satirical indie comedy, which is why it probably didn’t sell originally. Two months ago, we took out all the cursing and two sex scenes and overnight it magically became a family movie… not kidding. Warner Bros. scooped it up with no idea of what it once was, only what they thought it could be.
Hey, Jack, if you read this, would you email me? Curious to learn how the movie came together and the segue from WB to Uni. And congrats! Great cast.
Comment Archive