Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures To Remake Norwegian Diving Movie.

This is such an odd piece of news.

Hollywood actor and laid back thespian George Clooney is to remake the Norwegian thriller Pionner, which was released last August, about the true story of a group of divers who battle for compensation and the truth after they sustain injuries from diving 400 metres below the surface, to secure pipelines for the Norwegian oil and gas industry 40 years ago.

The main reason Clooney’s decision is so odd is that two American actors, Wes Bentley, (American Beauty, The Four Feathers), and Stephen Lang, (Avatar, Public Enemies), played prominent parts in the original, as American oil workers wrapped up in the scandal. By all accounts the story has been competently told, but Clooney’s production company Smokehouse Pictures thinks differently, as Pioneer producer Christian Fredrik Martin explained in a recent interview:

“When we first started work on Pioneer, Smokehouse got in touch. They came back to us last year when the film was released in Norway. Clooney and his fellow producers were attracted by the cinematic possibilities of the underwater world, I think, and also because it is the kind of non-fiction story their company has been interested in turning into films in the past.”