A real-life crisis will become a drama for Universal as power producer Brian Grazer has bought the rights to a book about the 2004 siege at a Russian school.
The incidents at Beslan school, which was overrun by Chechen terrorists, saw 300 hostages and 31 of their captors killed.
New York Times Moscow correspondent CJ Chivers chronicled the events, and he retuned 19 months later to interview the survivors for The School, an article in Esquire.
Now the producer of A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code has bought the rights to the piece, which he told Variety. "Captures for the first time the human aspect of a horrendous event.”
There is no writer, director or cast attached yet.