More details on boys’ journey
Producers plan film about rescue
The Thai Navy has released new footage from inside the Tham Luang caves, where 12 boys and their coach were trapped for over two weeks, revealing more details about the multi-day rescue mission that captured the attention of the world.
At the start of the seven-minute video, posted on Facebook after all 13 members of the group were successfully escorted out of the cave, two divers are seen adjusting their equipment while standing chest-deep in murky water.
Lit by several beams of white light, the divers in wet suits and helmets are seen submerging themselves in the water and grabbing on to a metal dive line used to guide them through the winding channels of the 9.5km cave.
A former Thai Navy Seal told AFP that the 12 boys were partially-sedated, fitted with a full face mask and passed from diver to diver through the cave complex in stretchers. There were doctors stationed throughout the trip.
Each of these arduous round trips took between nine and 11 hours for the team of 18 divers. To swim through the flooded tunnels, which could get as narrow as 40cm, one diver held the front end of the stretcher, with the boy’s oxygen tank, while another held the bottom end of the stretcher.
The new video does not include footage of the divers in the water with the boys, but it does show people using pulleys, string and rubber tubes to haul a green, kayak-shaped stretcher out of a tight crevice. As the entrance nears, dozens are seen wading through water to help carry the stretcher.
There is still some uncertainty about the degree to which the boys were sedated before being escorted out. The diver who spoke to AFP said the boys were “groggy” but “breathing”, while a BBC report wrote that according to divers, the boys were “heavily sedated to avoid anxiety.” Around five minutes into this video, the boy shown on screen has his eyes closed but appears conscious, bringing his right hand to his torso as people gather around him.
While the boys spent nine days without food and over two weeks in the dark, damp cave, they seem to be in good health. In another video, released by the Government, the boys seem energetic and healthy. Some are walking around, while others sit up in their beds, waving at cameras from their quarantined unit at the Chiangrai Prachanukroh Hospital.
The boys are out of the cave. Now Hollywood wants in.
The producers behind Christian films like God’s Not Dead are already in Thailand with plans to develop a movie about the 18-day saga of the football team trapped in a flooded cave. Although the drama of headline-grabbing rescues often doesn’t carry over the big screen, Pure Flix Entertainment cofounder Michael Scott believes the story about the 12 boys and their 25-year-old coach is ripe for movie adaptation.
“We realised that this would make an incredibly inspiring movie,” Scott said this week, speaking by phone from Thailand. “Like a lot of people, we know there’s not a lot of positive news in the world today.”
Scott said he feels a personal connection with the story. His wife is Thai and he said he was spending the summer in Bangkok when the football team went missing. Scott and fellow producer Adam Smith recently travelled to the area around the cave in the northern Thailand, and they have begun talking to some of the participants about their “life rights”.
But they also stressed that they aren’t yet pursuing most of the families of the boys, who yesterday remained recuperating in a hospital.
“For us it’s not a huge race,” said Smith. “It’s about making sure we get the authenticity right.”
Many hurdles await. Most films that enter development never get produced, and the producers are just beginning to seek a screenwriter. Other film productions companies will surely show interest, and they could leapfrog ahead with a larger production.
And while the Arizona-based Pure Flix has found some success with low-budget Christian films (The Case for Christ) and conservative documentaries (Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the
Democratic Party), it’s far from a Hollywood heavyweight. Others in TV and film are already looking to capitalise. Discovery has scheduled a one-hour documentary special to debut this weekend in the United States.
But Pure Flix hopes they can beat any fiction-film rush.
“I don’t think this is a religious film,” said Scott. “I think this is an inspirational film.”
There’s also some reason to doubt the box-office appeal of the tale.
Ripped-from-headlines movies have not been setting the world on fire, although Clint Eastwood’s Sully was a success.