Wearing her director's hat, Angelina Jolie will start shooting Unbroken, a movie based on the true story of US Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini who was captured by the Japanese in WW2, in Australia in October.
That’s according to Deadline.com, which reported Jack O’Connell will play Zamperini, who was a member of the US track team in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. As a US Army Air Forces bombardier, he survived a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean and after 47 days on a life raft was interned in a Japanese prison camp.
Englishman O’Connell’s credits include This is England, Harry Brown, TV’s Skins and the upcoming 300: Rise of an Empire.
Domhnall Gleeson (who played Bill Weasley in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts 1&2) will play a fellow survivor of the plane crash in the Universal-backed film.
Deadline said US actor Finn Wittrock (who appears in Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming Noah movie and HBO’s The Normal Heart) is in talks for a role.
On a recce tour of Australia several weeks ago, Jolie inspected the Fox Studios and the Village Roadshow Studios’ water tank. A Universal spokeswoman in Sydney said on Friday the studio has yet to confirm the location.
Unbroken will be Jolie's second directorial effort following The Land Of Blood And Honey, a romantic drama set against the backdrop of the Bosnian War.
The film is based on the Laura Hillenbrand novel Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption. IMDB.com lists the screenwriters as Joel and Ethan Coen and Richard LaGravenese.
“I read Laura Hillenbrand's brilliant book and I was so moved by Louie Zamperini's heroic story I immediately began to fight for the opportunity to make this film," Jolie said when the project was announced. "Louie is a true hero and a man of immense humanity, faith and courage.”