With all the news recently about real life pirates (none of whom are Johnny Deep to the best of my knowledge) it’s not surprising to hear rumblings around Hollywood about movies in development about the subject. You can add Samuel Jackson’s name to that list of developers.
Jackson is working on securing the rights to the story of this guy in Africa who negotiates the release of stolen ships from pirates. It’s not even his job… he doesn’t get paid for it… he just does it.
The guys over at Rope Of Silicon give us the following:
Samuel L. Jackson and his Uppity Films have joined forces with Andras Hamori’s H20 Motion Pictures to secure life rights of Andrew Mwangura, a negotiator between pirates and the owners of vessels hijacked off the coast of Africa.
Mwangura isn’t paid for his negotiating work; he makes his living as a freelance journalist. At one time he had 40 volunteers working for him, but the number is now nine after his organization turned out to be riddled with informers.
There is no word on who will write the script or what direction it will take, but the Variety article says that while Hamori was in Mombassa negotiating the rights deal Mwangura brokered the freedom of crew and cargo of the Ukrainian ship V.S. Faina for $3.4 million. The price was high because the pirates discovered a secret cache of Russian tanks.
This sounds like a fantastic idea for a movie and one of those situations where real life is more fascinating than anything a screenwriter can come up with. I wonder how many times the phrase “I want these mother fucking pirates off this mother fucking ship” will be used. I’m hoping for no less than 7 times.
