Doug Liman's last film was the low-key, overtly political drama Fair Game, but the Mrs. and Mrs. Smith and The Bourne Identity director is still wanted for his action credits, it seems. Just a few days after we reported that Paramount wanted Liman to make the outer space thriller All You Need Is Kill with Brad Pitt starring, Deadline says he's setting up Everest, about the earliest attempts to climb the world's tallest mountain.
You may know the name Sir Edmund Hillary as the first (white) man to climb Mount Everest, but decades earlier an Englishman named George Mallory made three attempts at the feat; though he died on the mountain on the last try, many believe he may have made it to the top after all. Even if his accomplishment doesn't seem all that stunning in retrospect, there's all kinds of historical context that makes the story meaningful, including the fact that Britain was still reeling from World War I and that, at the time of this climb, Mount Everest seemed as impossible to reach as Mars. Liman is a climber himself and apparently very fond of Mallory's story, so while he's probably bringing his action skills to the film, he'll have an emotional attachment as well.
Right now Liman is in negotiations to supervise a new draft of the script from Sheldon Turner, who wrote the original script adapted from Jeffrey Archer's book Paths of Glory. Deadline says the project is a priority for Sony Pictures, but it's unclear how it might fit in with everything else Liman has in the works. If you were wondering if he's return to his action roots post-Fair Game, though, I think you have your answer.
