Russell Crowe On For Survival Tale In Sand And Blood

Stories of survival against great odds are big at the moment – look at Unbroken or this week’s The Martian. Russell Crowe is attached to a new film that hews more towards the former, a true tale of shipwreck, slavery and smart thinking called **In Sand And Blood.

Ronan Bennett has written the script, which follows the story of the ill-fated crew of an American ship in 185. Wrecked on the coast of the Western Sahara, the starving, dehydrated men were captured, beaten and slaved by locals, kept alive with camel blood and urine. Five died, and the rest were sold on to a succession of tribesmen, who bartered their lives for sometimes as little as a blanket.

But when Captain James Riley (Crowe, assuming he’s made a deal) is sold to an Arab Trader named Sidi Hamet, the sailor somehow convinced him that he would sell for a better price to a European consul supposedly based in a Moroccan port a thousand miles north. The official was all in Riley’s mind, but it was a daring plan to that led to a fateful trek across harsh terrain.

While his participation in the film hasn’t been officially confirmed, The Wrap has dug in and found details, most notably a tweet from Crowe that shows him researching the role, though hopefully he's saving the whole "drinking camel blood and urine" for the film's effects whizzes to create, or else those animals are going to be awfully surprised.

The actor will next be seen in** Fathers And Daughters**, due here on November 13. He also has Shane Black’s The Nice Guys arriving on June 3 next year.