Boyle To Film Ralston Epic

The maker of Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle, is to direct a film based on the story of Aron Ralston, who sawed off his own arm to escape when he was pinned by a falling boulder in a canyon.

The dramatisation of Ralston's book, 'Between A Rock And A Hard Place' is set to be titled '127 Hours' and tells the story of how Ralston became trapped in a Utah canyon when a boulder fell onto him, pinning his arm against the canyon wall.

Remarkably, Ralston then survived by drinking his own urine before freeing himself by first bvreaking his trapped arm then cutting through it using a blunt multi-tool. The project is apparently scheduled to be shot next year and scheduled for release in later 2010.

Drama?

Quite how Boyle will cope with the dramatic difficulties of recreating what's essentially a static epic remains to be seen. It was certainly an issue for several early projects intending to film a version of Joe Simpson's Touching the Void, one of which astonishingly considered 'tweaking' the plot so that Joe and Simon were in touch using walkie talkies...

The successful version of that book maintained dramatic tension by mixing brilliantly filmed reconstructions of the climb with talking head footage of the main protagonists. It'll be interesting to see if Boyle uses the same method, or tries something entirely different. Should be interesting.