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Outside Magazine, June 2005

Outside Goes to the Movies
Action!—On Everest?

By Jenny Dubin

"You could have taken the '96 crowd out of central casting," says Beck Weathers, author of Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest, a 2000 book in which the Texas physician writes about his barely surviving Mount Everest in 1996, the infamous year that eight climbers died in a mountain storm. "The people were certainly more interesting than the piece of real estate."

Hollywood seems to agree, hence the decision to tell the dark story of Everest '96 once again—this time in a big-budget, big-screen feature film from Universal Studios/Working Title Films titled Everest and slated to be directed by Billy Elliot's Stephen Daldry. It's certainly a blockbuster story, but so far fans of Jon Krakauer's 1996 magazine account in Outside, and his best-selling book Into Thin Air, have had to squeeze satisfaction from one made-for-TV movie (ABC's dismal 1997 adaptation of Krakauer's book) and a brief glimpse of some of the climbers, including a severely frostbitten Weathers, in David Breashears's 1998 Imax film, also titled Everest.

As we reported in early 2004, Universal/Working Title has begun work on a feature about the peak, one that takes a different look at the Krakauer story, which focused a great deal of attention on the controversial decisions by guides Scott Fischer and Rob Hall to keep pushing for the summit after their designated turnaround time. Already, the filmmakers have reinterviewed many of the surviving climbers and family members and have optioned Weathers's book. The plan is to tell a "more personal story," says producer Jon Finn (Billy Elliot), one that follows Weathers and Kiwi guide Hall, who perished in a storm while trying to lead another client down the mountain.

As of this summer, the project was gathering serious momentum. Breashears, a coproducer, shot background footage on Everest in May 2004. Daldry has just emerged from staging a musical version of Billy Elliot and is turning his attention to Everest, determined to make it both authentic and dramatically appealing. That means location shoots, believable effects, and a story audiences care about—in other words, exactly the kind of climbing movie that Hollywood has had a hard time getting right in the past.

Technical accuracy and Himalayan filming aren't the only reasons the film has been in the slow cooker. Daldry wasn't satisfied with the first screenplay, from writer Michael Cristofer, so he turned to Lem Dobbs (The Limey) for a second try. Daldry hopes to begin principal photography in December 2005, with the film hitting theaters sometime in 2007.

No casting decisions have yet been made, but Daldry has reportedly talked to Nicole Kidman about playing Hall's wife, Jan Arnold. Weathers says he doesn't care who plays him, so long as the film rings true.

"I hope they make a good movie and that the people come across realistically," adds Weathers, who lost a hand and his nose to frostbite. "I also hope they don't make me look like the love child out of Deliverance."

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