Director Roland Emmerich is to step behind the camera for a World War II movie entitled Midway.
Investment for the project comes via China’s Bona Film Group with the movie being announced on Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival. Bona Film Group, who recently provided funding for Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, will retain the worldwide distribution rights for the film along with distributing in China.
The movie will centre on the Battle of Midway in WWII’s Pacific theater that saw a decisive victory for the US against the imperial Japanese Navy. Events took place six months after Pearl Harbor near Midway Atoll that caused crippling damage to the Japanese fleet that it could not recover from.
The Battle for Midway was a turning point in the war and Emmerich’s film will focus on US soldiers and aviators during the battle.
Wes Tooke has written the script for the project that will see Bona’s Yu Dong producing along with Emmerich, Mark Gordon, Matt Jackson, and Harald Kloser.
bldvl89 says
Awesome! Hope it’s more accurate than “Pearl Harbor”which was visually stimulating, but contained so many fictions as to be nearly unwatchable and was a major step down from “Tora, Tora, Tora.”
Am also counting on the remake to be far better than the original Midway (which told a great story and flipped the WWII history switch on me, but in terms of its action scenes, was very subpar to Tora, Tora, Tora) and which contained all kinds of misplaced footage from other movies (incl Tora, Tora, Tora)- and anachronistic footage fm WWII that was distracting – like Hellcats and Helldivers, guns of the Missouri, and later attacks on the USS Hornet and Bunker Hill and angled flight decks that didnt yet exist in June 42 . . .
The battle was a hugely compelling story without having to take ridiculous liberties with its portrayal. Hoping Mr Emmerich has leaned on some remarkable historians (Ian Toll is a fav) in production . . .