Ice Road Truckers: The Movie
By Steven Lloyd Wilson | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (25)
Did you know that if in the Pajiba article interface thing for adding a header image from the archive, one searches for the word “trucker,” two results come back? One is the image used by Michael Murray in his review of “Ice Road Truckers” last summer and one is of Amanda Seyfried wearing a trucker hat.
Right, on to the news portion of the news post. Fox picked up the movie rights for “Ice Road Truckers” when the show first premiered, and they are apparently grinding slowly towards actually making the film. John Moore, the director of Max Payne, has been attached and is proceeding to dry hump the living daylights out of the property to drum up interest.
“They’re hatching a plot around the storyline of the series, which covers a group of truckers who drive 18-wheelers over a 350-mile highway made of ice, as they haul equipment and supplies to diamond miners working in the tundra of Canada’s Northwest Territories. It’s a dangerous job given the brutal cold, breakdowns, crashes and melting ice on the remote roads are potentially fatal. “It is very much a tough guy movie,” Moore said. “Here’s a bunch of characters who tackle problems by getting in there and getting things done. We’ll turn it into a mission movie that harkens back to Towering Inferno, Jaws, or The Guns of Navarone. You got a problem, go solve it.” “
Look, the television series is about as boring as they come. It’s about truckers. There’s a camera showing them driving. That’s it. The show coasts on the constant ominous music and stock footage of thin ice viewed from below. I’m not discounting the danger that these drivers face, or shrugging at it in anyway. If I drove an 18 wheeler on an ice road above the Arctic circle, I wouldn’t even die because I’d be so incompetent that I’d manage to flip the damned truck while I was still inside getting coffee. Shows that get the documentary angle right like “The Deadliest Catch” or to a lesser degree “Ax Men” do so not because they show something dangerous, so much as because they show the day in and day out struggle of keeping financially above water, while focusing on the camaraderie and interaction of the men. There isn’t any camaraderie involved with watching someone drive down a road, no matter how dangerous the driving is.
The perverse thing is that this sort of show operates like a lottery ticket for the network that airs it. Do you think there’s a chance in hell that the History Channel doesn’t have the basic game plan laid out for marketing and tearful press conferences in case they luck out the worst case happens and someone does die on camera?
So yeah, “a mission movie” clearly means that someone saw a few episodes and wrote a completely unrelated movie using the setting as inspiration. I can tell you four things right now about this movie. First, it will be in 3D. Second, there will a hot female trucker with a shower scene, but cut just so that the film comes in at PG-13. Third, the protagonist will at some point fall through the ice during a fight. Fourth, Amanda Seyfried will not be in it.
(source: JoBlo)
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Comments
Posted by: Forbiddendonut at July 1, 2010 10:12 AM
I have no interest at all in this news. That said, the header alone made it worth reporting on.
Nice work, Scoop.