UK director to make 9/11 hijack film

Published on Wednesday 17 August 2005 01:47

A SECOND major Hollywood film is to be made about the 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States, it emerged yesterday.

Flight 93 will be made by the British director Paul Greengrass and will cover the flight in real time, beginning with take-off and ending when passengers brought it down in Pennsylvania, the magazine Variety reported.

It will follow the Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone's film based on the true story of two police officers trapped in the rubble of the Twin Towers. The as-yet untitled picture will star Nicholas Cage.

Flight 93 will depict how the United Airlines flight was hijacked by terrorists and the moment when passengers discovered via their mobile phones that other planes had been flown into the World Trade Centre.

When they realised their plane was being steered toward Washington DC, the passengers are believed to have confronted the hijackers and sacrificed their lives to bring the plane down.

Greengrass won critical acclaim in 2002 for Bloody Sunday, a dramatisation of events leading up to the 1972 civil rights protest in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, when British troops opened fire and killed 13 protesters.

The director will reportedly use hand-held cameras to give the 11 September film a realistic feel.

In his proposal for Universal studios, obtained by Variety, he wrote: "I ... believe that sometimes, if you look clearly and unflinchingly at a single event, you can find in its shape something precious, something much larger than the event itself ... the DNA of our times. Hence, a film about Flight 93."

Work is expected to begin in October.