Thar she blows! Spontaneous and No One Will Save You director Brian Duffield is dropping anchor on Whalefall, a unique undersea thriller with Wolfs actor Austin Abrams in the lead role. After scouring the depths of the audition pool for the right actor to dive into the tale, Abrams emerged as the top choice to topline the film based on the Daniel Krauss novel. The ambitious project lands with 20th Century, with Duffield co-writing the script alongside Krauss.
Deadline describes Whalefall as The Martian meets 127 Hours. The scientifically-accurate story focuses on a scuba diver searching for his deceased father’s remains, only to get swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale with only one hour to escape before oxygen runs out. While struggling to survive, the young diver discovers a new reason to live in the most unlikely place.
Here’s a synopsis for Krauss’s novel courtesy of Amazon:
Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year.
The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.
Granted, I have no concept of how large a sperm whale is when compared to a human, but damn. I’ve searched for comparison photos online but have yet to find one that does the concept justice. I’m interested, though. According to Deadline, competition to lead Whalefall was fierce, with Austin Abrams beating many actors to the punch.
Austin Abrams appears in films like Paper Towns, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and Do Revenge, though he recently starred alongside Brad Pitt and George Clooney in the Jon Watts crime thriller Wolfs for Apple TV+. Whalefall sounds like a whale of a time, and I imagine the filming process will be grueling and intense.
What do you think about Whalefall? Do you think you’d survive an hour inside a sperm whale’s mouth? How scientifically accurate will this movie be? I have so many questions. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
