Producers Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian bringing disaster story The Day Britain Stopped to the big screen

Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian have bought the rights to BBC docu-drama THE DAY BRITAIN STOPPED and will bring it to the big screen at 20th Century Fox. The duo, who have worked together twice before on HANNIBAL and AMERICAN GANGSTER, will produce the film but neither will write or direct it.

THE DAY BRITAIN STOPPED was a 2003 BBC television film shown in a documentary format. The story was based around a fictional disaster in which a train strike is the first in a chain of events that lead to a meltdown of the country’s transport system.

Scott and Zaillian will not be remaking the original film but rather utilizing the idea of a man-made disaster that would begin a worldwide chain of cataclysmic events.

I love apocalytpic and disaster stories and any unique take on the material is good with me. I hope they do not use found footage or the faux documentary approach but rather tell a straight story with a good script.

The original BBC version of THE DAY BRITAIN STOPPED is available on YouTube in it’s entirety. Check it out.