Disney Picks up Coast Guard Rescue Drama THE FINEST HOURS

Walt Disney Pictures has acquired the movie rights to the bestselling book, The Finest Hours, an inspirational true rescue story by Casey Sherman and Michael J. Tougias. The novel will get a screenplay adaptation by Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson who recently worked on the Mark Whalberg boxing film, The Fighter. 

The Finest Hour tells the story of a daring Coast Guard rescue off Cape Cod in 1952. “Two oil tankers were torn in half by treacherous waves during a deadly nor'easter blizzard. There were four rescue efforts, including two undertaken by a handful of men on two old, wooden, motorized 36-foot lifeboats. The men understood they had no business fighting frozen gale winds and seas but went anyway in an attempt to rescue the 84 men who were floating on halves of the cracked and sinking oil tankers.” 

It amazes me sometimes, the things that people will do in extreme circumstances to help people. This seems like a perfect story for Disney to tell, these are the kinds of films they are really good at making. The project was set up by Jim Whitaker's Entertainment, and he says that it’s “a riveting story of courage, and the fact that it's true makes it all the more compelling. Its characters and themes epitomize the stories we gravitate towards and are eager to produce at Disney."

I’m looking forward to seeing how this film project turns out. It sounds like a great story that I think people will be interested in seeing. The world could always use another good uplifting movie.

Here’s a full on description of the story from the book:

In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor'easter in years. As the weather wreaked havoc on land, the freezing Atlantic became a wind-whipped zone of peril.

In the early hours of Monday, February 18, while the storm raged, two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, found themselves in the same horrifying predicament. Built with "dirty steel," and not prepared to withstand such ferocious seas, both tankers split in two, leaving the dozens of men on board utterly at the Atlantic's mercy.

The Finest Hours is the gripping, true story of the valiant attempt to rescue the souls huddling inside the broken halves of the two ships. Coast Guard cutters raced to the aid of those on the Fort Mercer, and when it became apparent that the halves of the Pendleton were in danger of capsizing, the Guard sent out two thirty-six-foot lifeboats as well. These wooden boats, manned by only four seamen, were dwarfed by the enormous seventy-foot seas. As the tiny rescue vessels set out from the coast of Cape Cod, the men aboard were all fully aware that they were embarking on what could easily become a suicide mission.

The spellbinding tale is overflowing with breathtaking scenes that sear themselves into the mind's eye, as boats capsize, bows and sterns crash into one another, and men hurl themselves into the raging sea in their terrifying battle for survival.

Not all of the eighty-four men caught at sea in the midst of that brutal storm survived, but considering the odds, it's a miracle -- and a testament to their bravery -- that any came home to tell their tales at all.