The story of the USS Indianapolis, made famous by Quint's speech in Jaws, is getting its own movie with the director of The Help.
NewsThe story of the USS Indianapolis—the battleship that quietly delivered the Hiroshima nuclear bomb during World War II before it was sunk in shark infested waters—has been the stuff of nightmares. Yet, strangely it’s only been mined as a film story once before in the movie that actually caused people to recall this long-hushed-over tale of courage and horror: Jaws.
In the 1975 Steven Spielberg masterpiece, Robert Shaw harrowingly recounts the story of the USS Indianapolis and its crew, which was largely swallowed up by sharks or dehydration, to an enraptured Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss. However, the scene only came about because John Milius (who gave it a short mention in his script polish of Jaws) had an affinity for World War II stories. Ever since this iconic sequence, which had its final rewrite by Shaw’s one hand, many attempts have been made to turn the USS Indianapolis into its own film—including a brief attempt by Universal Pictures to make it a Jaws prequel about young Quint (Shaw’s character).
However, it appears that one version is finally coming to fruition since Deadline reports that Warner Bros. and husband-and-wife Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey’s production company, Team Downey, have finally inked a deal to bring USS Indianapolis to the big screen with a newly hired director. But it may not be how you expected.
Tate Taylor, director of 2011’s popular (in certain suburban circles) The Help, has been tapped to direct the film from a screenplay by Mike Jones. But according to Deadline, the film will tell the story of this naval tragedy from the wrap-around perspective of Hunter Scott, an 11-year-old boy who in 1996 becomes obsessed with the story after watching Jaws. He ends up writing a history report that seeks to absolve Captain Charles McVay of his unfair scapegoating and court martial by the U.S. Navy following the sinking of the Indianapolis. The film will cut between the time periods of 1945 and 1996 as Scott proves McVay’s heroism.
“We are excited about Tate’s unique vision and narrative approach in telling this complex story, which features multiple time periods and many perspectives,” the Downeys said in a statement.
That may be, I just hope that framing this as a schoolboy’s search for truth doesn’t mean the film will play down the grimness and horror of this story for the kind of feel-good sentiments that synopsis might otherwise imply.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the sinking of the U.S. Indianapolis.