Deadline is reporting that director Joe Wright (Atonement, Anna Karenina) will direct Academy Award winner Anne Hathaway (Interstellar, The Dark Knight Rises) in The Lifeboat for Focus Features and Working Title.
Based on Charlotte Rogan’s 2012 book, The Lifeboat takes place in the summer of 1914 when newlywed Grace Winters (Hathaway) survives the sinking of transatlantic ocean liner Empress. Now aboard an over-capacity lifeboat, the remaining passengers must choose factions to decide who stays and who goes.
Hathaway boarded the project back in 2013 after scoring her Oscar win for Working Title’s Les Miserables, and William Broyles Jr. (Cast Away) will write the script and executive produce. Working Title’s Tim Beva, Eric Fellner and Liza Chasin will produce The Lifeboat with Film 360’s Suzan Bymel and Ben Forkner.
Wright’s next film Pan, the fantastical prequel story to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan mythos, was supposed to open this summer but was pushed back to October 9 by Warner Bros. Pictures.
