You knew somebody was going to do it.
Goldie Hawn‘s production company Cosmic Entertainment has joined the basic-cable network F/X in developing a movie about the heroic passengers of United Flight 93, the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, Variety reported.
The film will be based on the Vanity Fair piece “Manifest Courage” by Bryan Burroughs, which was featured in the magazine’s December issue. The article followed the victims and their families on the morning of Sept. 11, from the time their day began to the plane crash at 10:06 a.m.
Through a series of vignettes, the film would take a glimpse into the lives of these ordinary people and look at what would make these individuals become the heroes they were. It will not concentrate on the horrifying experience they encountered on the plane itself.
“Bryan’s article did not spend very much time on the airplane on that day. Neither will we,” F/X Entertainment President Kevin Reilly told Variety. “This will not be ‘The Taking of Flight 93.'”
“It was almost impossible to comprehend the decision these people made to ultimately do what they did,” Reilly continued. “Everyone sat wondering if they would have had the same courage. None of them were wearing capes. They were just good people.”
Both Cosmic and F/X have agreed that the sensitivity of the issue is the most important element–and will be handled appropriately, or the film will not be made.
“We realize this is a sensitive subject,” Shanna Tyndall, the head of Cosmic’s TV division, told Variety. “We hope to do it justice and to memorialize the heroes made on the flight, as well as the heroes who were made after. Heroes also were made in those people they left behind.”
There are at least two other known TV projects regarding Sept. 11. CBS has a movie in development from journalist/producer Lawrence Schiller that will also focus on Flight 93, and the Canadian production company Alliance Atlantis is pitching a movie to networks, centering on the Hamburg, Germany, terrorist cell believed to be connected to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
