New Movie In The Heart Of The Sea - Directed by Ron Howard

Ben Whishaw has signed up to play Moby Dick author Herman Melville in Ron Howard's adaptation of In the Heart of the Sea.

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The 32-year-old Skyfall actor will join Brendan Gleeson, Cillian Murphy, Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Osy Ikhile and Tom Holland in the forthcoming action film, according to TheWrap.

In the Heart of the Sea follows the crew of a whaling ship that is destroyed by a sperm whale, stranding them at sea for 90 days, thousands of miles from home.

Gleeson will play an older version of one of the survivors who is interviewed by Melville about his experiences aboard the ship, while Ikhile will play a sailor named Peterson.

 In the Heart of the Sea is scheduled to begin shooting in September. Read More!

Book Overview: 

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The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents-including a long-lost account written by the ship's cabin boy-and penetrating details about whaling and the Nantucket community to reveal the chilling events surrounding this epic maritime disaster. An intense and mesmerizing read, In the Heart of the Sea is a monumental work of history forever placing the Essex tragedy in the American historical canon.