Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian Team for Disaster Pic (Exclusive)

As London braces for Friday's start of the Summer Olympics, disaster-minded authorities are trying to imagine the worst-case scenario.

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So are Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian.

The pair has acquired big-screen rights to the 2003 BBC pseudo-documentary The Day Britain Stopped and have set the project up at Twentieth Century Fox.

A source stressed that the film would not be a remake but is more inspired by the original.

The telefilm took place around a fictional disaster, in which a train strike is the first in a chain of events that led to a meltdown of the country’s transport system.

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Scott and Zaillian will produce the pic together via their Scott Free and Film Rites banners, respectively. They are in the process of finding a writer to adapt, with the idea of using a manmade disaster to ignite a global catastrophe. The Hollywood heavyweights last teamed on the period drama American Gangster, which Scott directed and Zaillian wrote. Fox declined comment.

Film Rites’ Garrett Basch is exec producing Day Britain Stopped.

The original, which first aired on BBC2, was written and directed by Gabriel Range. Simon Finch produced.