New behind-the-scenes look at the origins of Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Angelina Jolie’s UNBROKEN opens this week and if you're like me then you're still curious to see how things work out for this project. The initial trailer surprised me and subsequently sent me down a rabbit hole of information about Louis Zamperini's life (check out his Wiki page). What I found was an incredible true story that thankfully will be shared and as this new featurette explains, the movie based on Zamperini's story was in the works long before Laura Hillenbrand's 2010 book, which is the source material for Jolie's film.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Academy Award® winner Angelina Jolie directs and produces Unbroken, an epic drama that follows the incredible life of Olympian and war hero Louis “Louie” Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) who, along with two other crewmen, survived in a raft for 47 days after a near-fatal plane crash in WWII—only to be caught by the Japanese Navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. Adapted from Laura Hillenbrand’s (“Seabiscuit: An American Legend”) enormously popular book, Unbroken brings to the big screen Zamperini’s unbelievable and inspiring true story about the resilient power of the human spirit.

UNBROKEN opens December 25, 2014 and stars Jack O’Connell, Domhnall Gleeson, Garrett Hedlund, Jai Courtney, Alex Russell, John Magaro and Luke Treadaway.