According to Deadline, Gerardo Naranjo, who recently directed the outrageously tense drug world thriller "Miss Bala" (Mexico's Best Foreign Language Film entry), is being tapped for a big Fox romantic drama "The Mountain Between Us," making it his studio (and English language) debut.
The script, by J. Mills Goodloe, is based on the novel by Charles Martin, and, according to the report, tells the story of Ashley, a writer heading east for her wedding, who meets Ben, a doctor. When their flight is cancelled, the two charter a flight, only to have that plane's pilot suffer a heart attack. (What are the odds?) The plane crashes into a mountain and so the two fight the elements and their injuries to return to civilization, and, of course, fall in love with each other. Intense near-death situations often lead to romance. "Speed" taught us that.
While the material sounds somewhat dicey, with the capacity for potential over sentimentalizing nearing Nicholas Sparks-like levels, we have faith in Naranjo, who before "Miss Bala" directed the captivating, romantic French New Wave-y "I'm Gonna Explode."
The report also indicates that the film will be a co-production with Peter Chernin, Dylan Clark and Jenno Topping from Chernin Entertainment and has nothing to do with the similarly titled "Those Across the River," a Mike Medavoy production that we're pretty sure is about cannibalism.