I never got around to reading Moby Dick because like all good American school children, I was waiting for the film to come out. Sadly, it’s been six years since we last heard about the Wanted director’s planned Moby Dick movie (and two since Lynne Ramsay’s Moby-Dick-In-Space project). In the meantime, we have Ron Howard’s In The Heart Of The Sea, starring Chris Hemsworth. Not a direct adaptation of the Melville classic, but instead based on the real-life story of the Essex, a whaling ship whose doomed 1820 expedition supposedly inspired Moby Dick. In other news, I had a real hard time deciding between this headline and “Chris Hemsworth Chases ‘Dick.'”
In the winter of 1820, during the boom in the whaling business, Essex set out from New England and was torn apart by a mammoth whale. The boat went down, and that is really where this tale begins. It’s the story of cruel survival that involved leadership, cowardice, bad decisions, and cannibalism. [Deadline]
It’s based on the 2000 National Book Award-winning Nathaniel Philbrick book of the same name. According to the book description, the Essex was sunk by “a boisterous sperm whale,” which sounds like yet another metaphor for your mom. Ben Whishaw is apparently playing Herman Melville, and since Melville was one year old in 1820, I’m guessing there’s going to be some kind of bullshit framing device where a God-like narrator tells the whole story through flashback. Still, it will all be worth it to finally see Hollywood depict whales as the vengeful, bloodthirsty, instruments of God’s wrath they are rather than the usual huggable foils for dumb wiener kids. Mammals, underwater? Ain’t right, you ask me.
Opens March 2015.