Paul Greengrass, the helmer of The Bourne Supremacy, may have found his previous flick Watchmen put in turnaround over at Paramount but that hasn’t stopped him from finding another as he is now set up at Universal Pictures to helm Flight 93 the second major studio feature to be based on the September 11th terrorist attacks.
The film is set for an October start date and has quite an interesting set up as it has already been decided it will be a 90-minute feature covering the flight that crash landed in Pennsylvania in real time as it begins with the takeoff and hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93 by terrorists, the discovery by passengers with cell phones that other hijacked planes had been steered into the World Trade Center towers, and the realization that their plane was being steered toward D.C.
The film will hit its climax as the passengers decide to sacrifice their lives to bring down the plane… This one is sure to hit a nerve with many, many people.
Greengrass was quoted with the following statement by Variety:
“I … believe that sometimes, if you look clearly and unflinchingly at a single event, you can find in its shape something precious, something much larger than the event itself … the DNA of our times. Hence, a film about Flight 93,” he writes in the treatment.
The film is budgeted at $15 million and a 40-day shoot is planned and a possible first screening at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival may be the first time it is shown for an audience before it is released wide shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, over at Paramount Pictures Oliver Stone has his own 9/11 feature in pre-production, click here for more on that.
There are rumors that Greengrass will also direct The Bourne Ultimatum for Uni, but that is just rumor and is denied in the Variety article.
