Michael Sheen shinning up Everest for George Mallory movie
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Version 0 of 1. Michael Sheen will star as George Mallory, the intrepid British mountaineer who may have been the first to climb Everest, in the forthcoming biopic In High Places. Screen Daily reports the star of Frost/Nixon and Masters of Sex has signed on to appear alongside Kelly Macdonald and Andrew Scott, who will play his wife Ruth and fellow climber Noel Odell in the new film. Fledgling writer-director James McEachen, who plans to shoot the independently-financed film this September in South Tyrol, India, London and Cologne, described the film as “an epic story about the uncompromising nature of character and the sometimes overwhelming power of dreams”. He told Screen Daily: I have been fascinated by George Mallory for as long as I can remember. That led directly to my own Himalayan climbs in the 90s, including leading an expedition to 27,766 foot Makalu in 1992. It was this direct experience that gave me a deep-seated respect for the bold imagination and war-hardened bravery that Mallory and his companions displayed in their quest for the summit of Everest – long before the age of Gore-Tex and titanium. Mallory and climbing partner Andrew Irvine never made it down Everest following a 1924 British expedition aiming to make them the first men to reach the mountain peak. They were last seen about 800 vertical feet from the summit, and it is not known if they reached the top. Mallory’s body was recovered in 1999 following an expedition to reclaim the climbers’ remains. In High Places will be an Anglo-German production, with backing from London-based Wind Fish Motion Pictures and Cologne’s Medienparks NRW. The film is expected to have a relatively low budget. A separate film about Mallory, with Tom Hardy attached to play the mountaineer and Bourne Identity director Doug Liman in line to direct, seems to have become mired in development difficulties. That project was initially titled Everest, but later renamed The Summit due to clashing with another upcoming film about mountaineers starring Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke and John Hawkes in the story of a climbing disaster. |