Following last year’s reserved, admirable Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Vinterberg has been hired to direct Kursk, a submarine drama inspired by a tragic true story, for Luc Besson‘s Europa Corp. His picture will chronicle the sinking of the Kursk submarine, which claimed the lives of nearly 120 Russian soldiers. [Variety]
The events took place in the Barents Sea in the Arctic Ocean in August of 2000, attracting controversy for the Russian navy, whose delayed rescue mission was criticized as decidedly slow and ineffective. The screenplay is to be adapted by Saving Private Ryan scribe Robert Rodat from journalist Robert Moore’s A Time To Die, a 2010 real life study of the tragic event.