Spoiler alert: that is image is what happens at the end of Angelina Jolie's next movie. OK, so it probably won't actually be in the movie, but it does reveal the ending of the story at the center of Unbroken, which Angelina Jolie is gearing up to direct this month. Based on the book by Laura Hillenbrand, it tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a runner who competed at the 1936 Olympics (hosted by Hitler!) then enlisted to fight in World War II. When his plane crashed in the Pacific he survived 47 days at sea, then was captured by the Japanese and endured years in a brutal Japanese prison camp. And, as you can see in the photo, he eventually got to meet Angelina Jolie. What a life.
The fact that Zamperini survives is, obviously, not a spoiler-- people don't tend to make biopics about people who endure a ton of hardships during the war and then eventually die. And the fact that Zamperini is still alive has allowed Unbroken's star, newcomer Jack O'Connell, to get to know the man he'll be portraying-- according to the release that accompanied this photo, O'Connell tried on Zamperini's World War II bomber jacket, and it was a perfect fit.
O'Connell, who's already being eyed for some other high-profile roles, will be joined in the film by Domhnall Gleeson and Finn Wittrock as two other POWs. When I talked to Gleeson last week about his role in the upcoming About Time, he told me they were preparing to shoot scenes from later in the film, in which the three soldiers are starving; that had Gleeson on a strict diet that got him to the point where getting to eat a baked potato was an unbelievable luxury. O'Connell and Wittrock are presumably in similar conditions, which means they'll be thrown into some of the toughest parts of the shoot first thing-- but at least they're that much closer to getting to eat two baked potatoes someday.
Unbroken is currently set for release on Christmas Day next year. You can follow along with the film's development here. Here's Hillenbrand's statement on what inspired her to write the book, which should give you a pretty good idea of the story that Jolie has to work with:
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.
