'I Am Legend' Hemler Francis Lawrence Developing World War II Bestseller 'Unbroken'

Currently number two on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list, Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption has been purchased by Universal Pictures as a potential directing gig for Francis Lawrence. The book centers on the true story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who endured terrible trials as a prisoner of war during World War II. They're hoping that Scott Cooper, who wrote Crazy Heart, will adapt the script. Read more about Zamperini's story, as well as the half-century tale of this film's path to the big screen, after the jump.

Hillenbrand also wrote Seabiscuit, which was a major success for Universal, but that's not the only reason Universal paid upwards of seven figures for the rights to this story. Read how Hillenbrand came upon Zamperini and you'll wish you had the money to buy his story. Thanks to Amazon for this.

Eight years ago, an old man told me a story that took my breath away. His name was Louie Zamperini, and from the day I first spoke to him, his almost incomprehensibly dramatic life was my obsession.

It was a horse–the subject of my first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend–who led me to Louie. As I researched the Depression-era racehorse, I kept coming across stories about Louie, a 1930s track star who endured an amazing odyssey in World War II. I knew only a little about him then, but I couldn't shake him from my mind. After I finished Seabiscuit, I tracked Louie down, called him and asked about his life. For the next hour, he had me transfixed.

Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie was a hellraiser, stealing everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics, and closing in on the fabled four-minute mile, when World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. Stationed on Oahu, he survived harrowing combat, including an epic air battle that ended when his plane crash-landed, some six hundred holes in its fuselage and half the crew seriously wounded.

On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie's journey had only just begun.

That first conversation with Louie was a pivot point in my life. Fascinated by his experiences, and the mystery of how a man could overcome so much, I began a seven-year journey through his story. I found it in diaries, letters and unpublished memoirs; in the memories of his family and friends, fellow Olympians, former American airmen and Japanese veterans; in forgotten papers in archives as far-flung as Oslo and Canberra. Along the way, there were staggering surprises, and Louie's unlikely, inspiring story came alive for me. It is a tale of daring, defiance, persistence, ingenuity, and the ferocious will of a man who refused to be broken.

The culmination of my journey is my new book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. I hope you are as spellbound by Louie's life as I am.

What's also interesting is that Universal has been trying to bring Zamperini's story to the big screen for 50 years. They originally purchased the rights to his story when he published his memoir Devil at My Heels in 1957. Tony Curtis wanted to play the lead. Things fell through, though, for over 40 years. Then, in 1998, CBS did a profile on him that reignited the project. You can start to watch that here.

Obviously, the project once again ran into issues (even though Nicolas Cage wanted to play the lead) until Hillenbrand came around and shined a new light on the story with extensive research and perspective.

Who do you think should play Zamperini? Do you feel Francis Lawrence is the right man to direct this film? And has anyone read the book?

Source: Deadline