Jon Turteltaub Headshot - P 2011
Jemal Countess/Getty ImagesJon Turteltaub, best known for his work on Disney’s National Treasure movies, has come aboard to develop Fox 2000’s Beached as a directing vehicle.
Beached centers on a chubby 4-year-old child who falls overboard during a family outing, is raised by whales and goes on to become an Olympic swimmer. (No, it’s not the Ryan Lochte story.)
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Beached has been in development since 1997 and came in the form of a script from Ted Griffin, the writer of Steven Soderbergh’s all-star Ocean’s Eleven and more recently Tower Heist.
Although Betty Thomas was attached to direct at one point, the project has been dormant of late, and Turteltaub’s involvement kick-starts it. No doubt the popularity of swimming at the recent Olympics and NBC’s record ratings fueled the project’s resurgence.
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Turteltaub will oversee the writing of a new draft. Jordan Roberts wrote the previous draft.
Turteltaub most recently directed The Sorcerer’s Apprentice for Disney and is in preproduction on CBS Films’ Last Vegas, which stars Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman and Robert De Niro.
He is repped by WME, Oasis Media Group and Hanson Jacobson.
