What is it about toy box, tinkerer-type filmmakers and deep water? Before James Cameron and his mini-subs, before David Fincher and his perennially unproduced 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, there was Luc Besson and The Big Blue, the biggest-grossing French film of the 1980s. Besson, now best known as a producer, will be returning to his early obsession with The Lake, an upcoming thriller about a group of Navy SEALs looking for sunken treasure in Serbia.
Besson is co-writing and producing the film, much of which will reportedly be shot underwater, with Steven Quale in the director’s chair. Quale previously directed Final Destination 5 and Into The Storm; more importantly, he was a long a long-time assistant and production coordinator for James Cameron, going back to The Abyss, and co-directed Cameron’s early 3D IMAX production Aliens Of The Deep.
And, as everybody knows, you can’t make a movie about Navy SEALs without getting someone to yell at them. Deadline is reporting that the task will fall to recent Oscar winner (and all-around beloved character actor) J.K. Simmons, who will play “the leathery boss to the SEALs who doesn’t exactly approve of what his team is doing”—a role he will presumably tackle with gusto, despite the fact that he could basically do it in his sleep.