Angelina Jolie has been, reportedly, rather “choosy” about who she hires to rewrite the script for Unbroken, a diretorial project at Universal she took over from Francis Lawrence (who’s fucking with Hunger Games these days).
You can’t get much choosier than hiring the Coen Brothers.
While the brothers are obviously known as a pair of writing/producing/directing/editing auteurs in and of themselves, they have and occasionally do write scripts without directorial intentions in mind. In this case they’ll be rewriting the adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand’s novel, which tells the story of… really just the biggest badass possible.
An Olympian, a war hero, an extended-time POW, and an otherwise massively inspirational figure, Lou Zamperini has lived a life that is definitely movie material. This is a man who began his career of badassery by running track in the olympics, impressing Hitler, and then stealing Hitler’s personal Olympic flag. He then moved on to being a bombardier in the Air Force in 1941 before being shot down and surviving a Life of Pi-like ordeal on the ocean against storms and shark attacks. He was ultimately captured by the Japanese and took two years of torture and imprisonment before returning home and becoming a Christian motivational speaker.
That’s the short-version anyway.
It’s not hard to see how the Coen’s could bring their own peculiar sensibility to this, but with Jolie seemingly bent on making very IMPORTANT movies, perhaps they’ll deliver more straightforward survival drama?
Right now the Colin Firth comedy Gambit is out there, with another director taking on a Coen Brothers script, if you’re interested to see what that’s like.
Source | THR