Shekhar Kapur to direct life story of George Mallory

By Siewaun
Reference: Variety

Shekhar Kapur ("Elizabeth," "Elizabeth: the Golden Age") is set to direct a Mt. Everest movie, which is based on the life story of famed English mountaineer George Mallory, for Julia Roberts' Red Om Films and Kevin Townsend's Science + Fiction.

Roberts is co-producing alongside Philip Rose and Lisa Gillan of her Red Om Films' banner and Townsend.

Townsend teamed up with the screenwriting duo of Matthew Faulk and Mark Skeet "Vanity Fair" to write the script for the movie, which is set post-WW1 England, and centers on Mallory's attempts to scale Everest, and the toll it takes on his marriage, as the mountain becomes his obsession.

Mallory is famously quoted as replying, "Because it's there" to the question "Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest?"

Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, both disappeared somewhere high on the North-East ridge in 1924, during their attempt to make the first ascent of the world's highest mountain.