Hollywood Film About Swimming Prodigy in the Works; Will Real Swimmers Be Cast?

PHOENIX, Arizona, August 28. AFTER the critical and commercial failure that was Swimfan, Hollywood is making another attempt at making a feature film about swimming.

The Hollywood Reporter website announced the start of development talks for an upcoming film called Beached, in which a 4-year-old child falls overboard off a boat during a family vacation, is raised by whales and grows up to become an Olympic swimmer. (Yes, the film is reportedly a work of fiction.) Jon Turteltaub, the director of the National Treasure action films and the romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping, is in line to direct the film. No word if Turteltaub's former high school classmate and National Treasure star Nicolas Cage is set to have a role in the film. And with the project still in the scriptwriting stage, no announcement has been made on casting, especially in the area of hiring actual swimmers to make any competition scenes more authentic.

Update: The 2007 film Pride focused on the creation of the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation swim team and the issues Jim Ellis faced in the community in the 1970s.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the script by Ocean's Eleven writer Ted Griffin has been in limbo since 1997, but a new draft is set to be written for this current production, likely to capitalize on the wave of popularity swimming saw from the Olympics. The average film, however, takes about two years to cast, rehearse, film and edit, so don't expect to see Beached on the big screen until at least 2014.

Full text of Hollywood Reporter article

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