Sir Ridley Scott takes the plunge

Sir Ridley to direct best-selling diving adventure novel 'Shadow Divers'

Jun 22 2005

Fresh off the release of summer epic 'Kingdom of Heaven' Sir Ridley Scott has provisionally agreed to helm the adaptation of Robert Kurson's best-selling novel 'Shadow Divers'.

The book follows wreck divers Richie Kohler and John Chatterton, who discovered a sunken WWII U-boat just off the coast of New Jersey in 1991.

Exploring the wreck consumed the pair's lives for the next seven years, costing them three diving companions as they endeavoured to discover the origins of the boat they nicknamed U-Who.

Fox 2000 owns the rights to the book and handed it over to 'Cast Away' scribe Bill Broyles to pen the script before taking an early draft to Sir Ridley.

Elizabeth Gabler, of Fox 2000, was delighted when she got the answer she was looking for, 'He [Scott] is a tough date, he doesn't say yes a lot, but he responded immediately.'

The ever-busy director already has one film in the pipeline – 'A Good Year', about a London banker who moves to the south of France to live on a vineyard – and is shooting another short film for children's charity UNICEF.

'Shadow Divers' should prove a major logistical challenge and it may well be 2007 before we see it on the big screen.