Wolverine director Gavin Hood sets his sights on Alaskan adventure

Before X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, Gavin Hood made a good movie. An excellent movie, even. No, not RENDITION (which I’ve admittedly not seen). The film was TSOTSI, the South-African drama about the life of a young Johannesburg gang leader which won the director the 2006 Foreign-Language Oscar. Will Hood’s potential next film, an untitled Alaskan adventure project, be a return to form?

From THR: “Based on Gay and Laney Salisbury’s book ‘The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic,’ the true story centers on a 674-mile journey undertaken by 20 men and 200 dogs who rushed a diphtheria antidote to Nome, Alaska, in 1952. The group braved temperatures of minus-60 degrees, a phenomenon known as ice fog and other dangers, capturing the attention of the lower 48 states. One lead dog even got a statue in New York’s Central Park.”

The filmmakers hope to get production on the human/dog Alaskan drama underway this summer. Hood is just coming off the television pilot “Tough Trade” for the Epix network, which stars Lucas Black, Cary Elwes, and Sam Shepard about the Nashville music scene. He then has another television pilot he’s attached to direct called “Breakout Kings” which has been picked up by Fox.