Ninja Assassin Screenwriter to Write Movie about BP Oil Rig Disaster

As soon as that BP oil rig exploded you know Hollywood could wait to be able to turn this disaster into a movie. The tragedy caused the second biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. 

Summit Entertainment and Participant Media are developing the feature centered on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig tragedy. The studio acquired the feature rights to The New York Times article Deepwater Horizon's Final Hour, written in back in December by David Barstow, David Rohde, and Stephanie Saul. 

The April 20 explosion of Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 men working on the platform and injured 17 others. The subsequent gusher wasn't capped until July.

Matthew Sand (Ninja Assassin) has been hired to adapt the story into a feature film script "aimed at focusing on the courage of those who worked on the oil rig and the final minutes leading up to the disaster." Did any of these people see Ninja Assassin? Because the script sucked ass.

Summit is currently in talks with producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura (Red, the Transformers franchise) to produce the movie through Di Bonaventura Pictures.

According to Summit production prexy Erik Feig,

This film will portray the great heroism that took place last year on the Deepwater Horizon rig and how colleagues so courageously came to each other's aide. This piece in The New York Times evoked the raw emotion these brave men experienced and endured throughout the tragedy that took place in April of last year and we hope to evoke the same emotions for our audience with this movie.

If your interested in the full story of what happened, make sure to read The New York Times article. Here's the opening paragraph to get you started.

The worst of the explosions gutted the Deepwater Horizon stem to stern. Crew members were cut down by shrapnel, hurled across rooms and buried under smoking wreckage. Some were swallowed by fireballs that raced through the oil rig’s shattered interior. Dazed and battered survivors, half-naked and dripping in highly combustible gas, crawled inch by inch in pitch darkness, willing themselves to the lifeboat deck. It was no better there.

I think it's funny Hollywood likes to profit off major disasters like this. I saw enough of this drama unfold on TV as it happened, I don't need to see a movie based on it.