Universal Hatches Hiroshima A-Bomb Tale ‘Shockwave’; Cary Fukunaga To Direct, Hossein Amini To Write
EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures is negotiating with Cary Fukunaga to direct and for Hossein Amini to write a film based on the Stephen Walker non-fiction book Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima. The film will be produced by Working Title Films’ Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Liza Chasin.
The book told a story of events that led up to a Monday morning in August 1945 when a five-ton bomb—dubbed Little Boy by its creators—was dropped from an American plane onto the Japanese city of Hiroshima, soon to be followed by another that devastated Nagasaki. The first blast left one-third of its 300,000 people dead and the city incinerated, and the dawn of the Atomic Age was launched. The book told the stories that led up to the fateful day, from the scientists who worked secretly on the Manhattan Project, some out of fear the Nazis would unleash one first if they didn’t, to President Truman White House that believed the Japanese would never give up and that countless casualties would be the result in a prolonged war, to the Japanese who witnessed the devastation and unimaginable horrors.
Fukunaga helmed Beasts of No Nation and Amini wrote Drive and co-wrote the Tomas Alfredson-directed Snowman with Michael Fassbender, as well as the upcoming AMC series McMafia. Fukunaga and Amini together scripted the TNT adaptation of the Caleb Carr novel The Alienist. Fukunaga is hard at work on Maniac, the Netflix series that will reunite Superbad‘s Jonah Hill and Emma Stone.
Executive Vice President of Production Erik Baiers will oversee the project for Universal. Fukunaga is represented by WME, Anonymous Content and Lichter, Grossman. Amini is represented by WME and Curtis Brown Group in the U.K.
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