Duelling movies have featured volcanoes, asteroids, and now it is the turn of whales.
The “duelling movie” phenomenon is a curious one. Sometimes it comes from a script being rewritten, but the earlier draft living on and being picked up by another studio. Sometimes it comes from studios following their standard “monkey see / monkey do” approach and thinking that if something is hot right now, they need to jump on that trend. Sometimes a creative feels wronged, and it is a revenge play. Sometimes it is just a coincidence.
Armageddon and Deep Impact are famous examples of this, as are Dante’s Peak and Volcano. Top Gun and Iron Eagle strike a chord for Outposters of a certain age. Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, Tombstone and Wyatt Earp, Showgirls and Striptease, The Prestige and The Illusionist. The list goes on.
The powers that be in Hollywood have decided that we need not one, but two movies about people being swallowed by whales next year, with neither a Jonah nor a Pinocchio in sight.
First up is Leslie Grace, you may remember her from Batgirl… oh, no you won’t, for reasons we all know. She is set to star in director Felipe Vargas’ next movie Propel. Reports say it is Gravity meets 127 Hours. Grace will star as diver Kate Acosta, who ends up swallowed by an enormous sperm whale while performing a commercial dive and has to figure out how to escape with her life.
It will go up against Whalefall, a movie we already reported on way back in 2024 that is referred to as The Martian meets 127 Hours. We are seeing a pattern here.
In this story, based on the novel by Daniel Kraus, a scuba diver is searching for the remains of his father, who recently passed away, when he’s swallowed by a sperm whale. With only one hour to figure out how to escape, the diver is stuck in a dire life-and-death situation but finds a reason to fight to survive in the most unlikely of places.
Josh Brolin has been in talks to join Whalefall alongside star Austin Abrams, with Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You) set to direct.
A big summer for fans of hungry whales.