Australia’s Eric Bana is set to take a leading role in Craig Gillespie’s new feature THE FINEST HOURS. Disney are adapting the film from the best-selling book The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Most Daring Sea Rescue by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman. Bana will play Daniel Cluff a Coast Guard warrant officer. Bana joins the previously announced Chris Pine and Casey Affleck.
In the early hours of Monday, February 18 1952, a storm raged off the coast of Cape Cod. Two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, found themselves in the same predicament. Built with “dirty steel,” neither could withstand such ferocious seas, both tankers split in two, leaving the dozens of men on board at the Atlantic’s mercy. THE FINEST HOURS is the story of the valiant attempt to rescue the souls huddling inside the broken halves of the two ships.
Bana’s Warrant Officer Cluff supervises Pine’s character Bernie and has to order him into danger. Craig Gillespie who directed the 2011 remake of FRIGHT NIGHT is best known for Ryan Gosling vehicle LARS AND THE REAL GIRL (2007)
