Director Brian Duffield is going from alien invasion to aquatic horror. The filmmaker behind last year’s acclaimed No One Will Save You has lined up his next project in the form of Whalefall. Disney’s 20th Century Studios has landed the theatrical distribution rights for the film in what was described as a competitive bidding situation, per Deadline. Imagine Entertainment previously locked up the rights to author Daniel Kraus’ novel of the same name.
Duffield is set to direct the film. He will also co-write the screenplay alongside Kraus. No word yet on casting or how soon production could begin. As for the story at hand? It’s been described as The Martian meets 127 Hours, only it involved a man inside a whale. The official synopsis for the book reads as follows:
“Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year. The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.”
So yeah, quite a bit going on there. A meaty role for the right actor, some creature-feature action, and the possibility of some pretty weird stuff going down. It’s not hard to see why multiple studios were bidding on this one. Imaginary locked up the rights for the book before it was even released, so there is some heat behind this one. Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Allan Mandelbaum, Richard Abate and Robert Rowbotham are on board as executive producers, with J.R. Young overseeing for 20th Century Studios.
In addition to No One Will Save You, Duffield also wrote and developed the Skull Island animated series, which premiered on Netflix last year. Duffield previously helmed the coming-of-age genre flick Spontaneous. He also wrote the Kristen Stewart horror movie Underwater, as well as Netflix’s The Babysitter films.
Whalefall does not currently have a release date, but stay tuned.
