13/01/2014 - After American blockbusters Contraband and 2 Guns, Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur films the 1996 mountain climbing disaster with Jake Gyllenhaal and Josh Brolin in the leads

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur, who will receive the first Honorary Nordic Dragon Award at Sweden’s upcoming Göteborg International Film Festival (January 24-February 3), will next week start principal photography for his new US feature Everest on locations in Nepal, before continuing in Italy and at UK’s Pinewood Studios.

Kormákur’s latest American production, 2 Guns (2013), starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, became No 1 on the US charts, and has so far grossed €96 million worldwide. Contraband (2012), with Wahlberg and Kate Beckinsale, also became a US blockbuster and reached €70 million in the international box-office.

His latest Icelandic feature, The Deep [+see also:
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Scripted by Justin Isbell and William Nicholson, from Jon Kreakauer’s Into Thin Air (which was filmed in 1997) and interviews with survivors, Everest depicts the 1996 disastrous attempt to scale the tallest mountain in the world (8,848 metres; a sudden blinding storm hit three different expeditions, killing eight climbers.

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Jason Clark, with Icelandic actor Ingvar E Sigurdsson, the film about “ambition, the beginning of the commercialisation of the Everest - an understanding of why people do this, try to climb it” (according to Baltasar) is produced by Working Title, with Cross Creek Pictures and Walden Media.