Clint Eastwood’s next film will be about hero pilot Captain “Sully” Sullenberger
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Clint Eastwood’s next project will be about Chesley Sullenberger, a.k.a. “Captain Sully,” the veteran pilot and safety consultant who came to national attention after executing a rare successful emergency water landing in the Hudson River in 2009. The incident turned Sullenberger into an overnight media hero and spawned a best-selling memoir, Highest Duty, which will serve as the basis for the as-yet-untitled project.
All in all, it seems like a more or less perfect combination of subject and director. Eastwood, fresh off American Sniper, the biggest commercial success of his career, has a long standing fascination with America’s heroic iconography and with notions of duty, and has spent the most of the last decade making movies on real-life subjects. He also knows how to stage a tense set piece and, given the opportunity, will probably light the interior of US Airways Flight 1549 like some kind of smoky casket.
Eastwood was previously considering directing that Richard Jewell movie starring Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio—another project well within his wheelhouse—but reportedly backed out after Fox was unable to negotiate a deal with Warner Bros., Eastwood’s longtime studio. The new project, produced by Allyn Stewart and longtime Spielberg associate Frank Marshall, is still in the early stages, though we have our fingers crossed for Bruce Greenwood in the lead.