The Wreck: shark thriller set inside a sunken WWII battleship

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Altitude Film Sales has a "high concept survival thriller" to pitch to buyers at this year's Cannes virtual market. The project is called The Wreck, and it's yet another movie about people getting eaten by great white sharks.

Set to be directed by Liam O'Donnell, the man behind the Skyline franchise, The Wreck has a screenplay by Nick Saltrese and will tell the story of 

a group of old college friends who reunite on a Caribbean scuba diving trip exploring the wreckage of a WWII battleship and find themselves trapped inside the underwater labyrinth of rusted metal surrounded by great white sharks.

Sharks pursuing divers inside the wreckage of a sunken World War II battleship sounds like the makings of a winner to me.

Filming will begin in Malta this September, and O'Donnell has chosen someone with shark thriller experience to be his cinematographer: Mark Silk. Silk was the director of photography on both 47 Meters Down and 47 Meters Down: Uncaged.

The Wreck is being produced by Andrew Prendergast and Chris Reed, with Altitude's Will Clarke, Andy Mayson, and Mike Runagall serving as executive producers.

O'Donnell had this to say about The Wreck: 

Who doesn’t want to explore a beautiful underwater shipwreck with smart, funny and gorgeous people as great white sharks try to tear them all to shreds? Nick’s script is a real white knuckled ride and Mark is one of the best underwater cinematographers in the world. I can’t wait to dive in."

O'Donnell co-wrote Skyline and went on to write and direct Beyond Skyline and Skylines. Saltrese wrote the upcoming thriller Jetski for The Wreck's producers. That film is about a group of partiers getting stranded at sea on a broken-down jetski, with "predators circling in the choppy waters".