While he still looks buffer and fitter than you or I will ever be, the recurring narrative for every actor that starred in Ron Howard‘s "In The Heart Of The Sea," including lead Chris Hemsworth, was that the entire cast was starving to death. “When you’re already starting off lean, it’s brutal to chew through that kind of weight. Every pound feels like a kilogram. We kind of went insane, weighing ourselves every day,” the "Thor" actor told EW recently. “We all felt like a bunch of supermodels, trying to get down in weight for a show, or something. That’s all we spoke about. You’ve got 15 burly blokes on the sea and all we talked about was our diet, and who’d lost more weight, and who’s looking really skinny. It’s ridiculous!”
Essentially a "Moby Dick" style action adventure film, based on the story that inspired the novel, “In The Heart Of The Sea” was originally scheduled for a March 2015 release, but then got bumped to December, presumably for more time to work on VFX — the movie features a gigantic digital whale — but also as a show of confidence from the studio. While it remains to be seen if the movie will be an awards contender, the December 11th release suggests, at the very least, something that could strike a chord with audiences.
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Co-starring Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, and Brendan Gleeson, the movie centers on novelist Herman Melville (Whishaw), whose inquiries into the sinking of a whale ship event 30 years after the fact helped bring the “Moby Dick” story to the surface. Here’s the official synopsis:
In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex was assaulted by something no one could believe: a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance. The real-life maritime disaster would inspire Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. But that told only half the story. “Heart of the Sea” reveals the encounter’s harrowing aftermath, as the ship’s surviving crew is pushed to their limits and forced to do the unthinkable to stay alive. Braving storms, starvation, panic and despair, the men will call into question their deepest beliefs, from the value of their lives to the morality of their trade, as their captain searches for direction on the open sea and his first mate still seeks to bring the great whale down.
Maybe we’ll see it at the AFI Festival in November, as it could be a good crowd-pleasing festival effort. “In The Heart Of The Sea” pulls into port on December 11th. Watch the latest trailer below.
