LATEST NEWS

George Clooney & Grant Heslov to Remake Norwegian Thriller 'Pioneer'

by Ethan Anderton
February 13, 2014
Source: THR

Right now you can see the latest filmmaking effort from director George Clooney and producer Grant Heslov with The Monuments Men. Unfortunately, despite my excitement for the film, it turned out to be a disappointing historical drama with an inconsistent tone reminiscent of the live-action dramas Disney made in the early to mid 90s. But Clooney and his Smokehouse Pictures producing partner Heslov are still a great team who have delivered fine films like The Ides of March and Good Night and Good Luck. Now they're lining up a new project with THR saying Sony has set the duo to remake the Norwegian thriller Pioneer.

The Norwegian film is set in the early 80s, focusing on the birth of the Norwegian oil industry, and follows Petter, a bachelor whose sole passion is deep-sea diving as he and his brother Knut, a family man, take part in a test of whether it's possible to lay pipelines 500 metres below the frigid North Sea. Helping the Norwegians is a team of Americans employed by a multinational company that desperately wants the drilling contract. When the first test goes catastrophically wrong and no one is willing to take responsibility, an infuriated Petter digs deeper into the incident to find numerous conflicting interests and suspects.

The original film featured Norway's big star Aksel Hennie, along with American actors Wes Bentley and Stephen Lang. As for the cast this time around, it's too early to say. However, at this point Clooney is only on board to produce the film, and isn't lined up to direct as he did with The Monuments Men. Clooney and Heslov have an impressive roster of friends who work both in front of and behind the camera, so they won't have any problem rounding up a solid team of talent to get this project off the ground (but a writer needs to be hired first). But is anyone interested in a story like this? Stay tuned.

Find more posts: Development, Movie News

2 Comments

New comments are no longer allowed on this post.