Rising Russian director Kirill Sokolov (“Why Don’t You Just Die!”) and “Vikings” star Danila Kozlovsky have boarded “Alone in the Ocean,” a big-budget survival drama based on the true story of a Soviet man who spent three days lost at sea.
Pic is produced by Artem Vasilyev of Metrafilms, Roman Borisevich of Plan 9 and Konstantin Buslov of RB Production, and co-produced by André Logie of Belgium’s Panache Prods. It’s being prepped to go into production in 2022.
Set in the 1970s and based on the book of the same name, “Alone in the Ocean” tells the story of Slava Kurilov, an oceanographer aboard a Soviet vessel plying the Philippine Sea who decides to leap overboard, only to learn that after a grave miscalculation he’s more than a hundred miles offshore. Kurilov spends the next three days at sea fighting for survival, determined to live his passion for the ocean, and to free himself from the oppression of Soviet life.
Sokolov (pictured) made his feature directorial debut last year with “Why Don’t You Just Die!,” which Variety’s chief film critic Peter Debruge described as “a neatly conceived dark-comedy chamber piece” offering “the kind of deranged Grand Guignol bloodbath that’s wrong in all the right ways.”
The film, which world premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, was sold by Reel Suspects to Arrow for the U.S. and U.K., along with a host of other territories.
The multi-hyphenate Kozlovsky most recently directed and starred in “Chernobyl,” a big-budget action film about the aftermath of the nuclear power plant meltdown, which was acquired by Capelight Pictures for North America to be released later this year.