Last week, we heard that Universal was developing a new Jason Bourne movie, with All Quiet On The Western Front director Edward Berger and literally no one else—not even Matt Damon, Jason Bourne himself—attached yet. Now, in a move that is probably not the masterclass in high-level pouting that it kind of looks like, regular Bourne series director Paul Greengrass (he made three of the four Damon ones) has announced that he’s getting in an airplane and taking it straight to the bottom of the ocean, as far away from Universal and Jason Bourne as you can possibly get.
To be more accurate, Greengrass is actually going to direct an adaptation of T.J. Newman’s bestselling novel Drowning: The Rescue Of Flight 421, which Warner Bros. won in a heated (and very pricey) bidding war with every other studio in Hollywood. That comes from Deadline, which notes that various publications and retailers have named Drowning one of the best books of the year.
The book, which pulls from Newman’s real-life experience as a flight attendant, is about an airplane (flight 421, presumably) that crashes into the ocean shortly after takeoff and sinks, trapping the handful of survivors in one sealed-off section. The survivors include an engineer and his preteen daughter, and if that all didn’t seem enough like a perfect setup for a movie already, Deadline adds that the engineer’s estranged wife is “part of the elite rescue team that races to save the passengers before their air runs out.” Thrilling!
The movie is probably going to pull more from Greengrass’ experience with stuff like Captain Phillips and United 93 than the Bourne movies, but who better to serve on an elite airplane rescue team than someone with secret CIA training and no memory of their past? Drop a Treadstone operative into the ocean and Flight 421 will be flying out of there in no time.