Here is your first look at Peter Weir’s upcoming WWII-prison-escape-epic “The Way Back,” courtesy of Quiet Earth.
Starring the likes of Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Colin Farrell and Saoirse Ronan, the film is based on a true story and centers on a group of seven prisoners who escape a Siberian labor camp in 1940 and attempt to trek thousands of miles across hostile terrain to India and their freedom. The script reportedly draws from “The Long Walk,” a book telling the real story of one of the trek’s survivors, Slavomir Rawicz.
The film will be Weir’s first since 2003’s “Master And Commander” and sees Harris playing an American inmate, Farrell a bad-boy Russian, Sturgess a Polish prisoner and Ronan a young Russian on the run who meets up with the fugitives. Versatile Brit actor Mark Strong has evidently also joined the cast after the initial announcement.
“The Way Back” shot earlier this year in Bulgaria, Morocco and India and should see release sometime in 2010.