The English thesp Christian Bale is in talks to climb Everest for Universal Pictures and Working Title. A mountain climbing disaster film that The Deep helmer Baltasar Kormakur will direct is based on the 1996 disastrous expedition that left eight climbers dead.
Last year, busy Icelandic director Kormakur (Contraband, 2 Guns) described the then-unnamed lead who he was in talks with as ‘an actor who is known for… put(ting) himself through hell.'
Here's what Kormakur also told Filmmaker about Everest:
The next film I'm doing after this one is Everest, about the '96 Rob Hall and Beck Weathers and Doug Hansen ascent — the biggest accident on Everest. And that's going to be probably as extreme (as The Deep).
He said that he plans to shoot the film on Everest as much as possible and then on a glacier in Iceland.
I want to warn everyone out there that this film is not to be confused with Doug Liman‘s project of the same name, which is set to star Tom Hardy as Sir George Mallory, the first person to reach the peak of the world's tallest mountain in the 1920s.
As for Bale, he's preparing to team up with his The Fighter director, David O. Russell, for an untitled project that will also star Jeremy Renner, Bradley Cooper and Amy Adams. That should shoot in the spring, before Everest summer production start.
