Filmmaker will direct wildfire tragedy…
Deadline has learned that ‘Out Of The Furnace’ and ‘Crazy Heart’ helmer Scott Cooper is to take the director’s chair for a fact-based drama that aims to pay tribute to the 19 firefighters — members of the Prescott Fire Department’s Granite Mountain Hotshots — who lost their lives while fighting the deadly Yarnell Hill wildfire in Arizona in 2013.
Ken Nolan (‘Black Hawk Down’) will pen the script for the film, with Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mike Menchel of Evolution Entertainment, and Conde Nast Entertainment’s Dawn Ostroff and Jeremy Steckler producing. Erik Howsam of di Bonaventura Pictures will serve as executive producer.
“The heroic and tragic story of the men who gave their lives to protect the community of Yarnell is heartbreaking, compelling and inspiring,” said Cooper. “I look forward to telling their story with the respect, sensitivity and authenticity that these true American heroes deserve.”
Bonaventura added, “The nation came together to mourn the great loss of life by these heroes, but their bonds with each other makes their story so much more extraordinary and compelling. The story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, and the tragedy that befell them, is not as much about the fire as it is about a group of blue-collar guys and their families and the brotherhood that they form with one another.”