chris kentis Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The first time I watched Open Water, I had nightmares for a week. Mainly because, when I'm on vacation, the wife and I are those two people who go on the same type of diving excursions. Plus, I never like to stay with the crowd -- I always venture off to find my own space, away from all the awkward vacationers and their seven disposable, underwater cameras. So when I saw the flick, I said to myself: "Crap, that could most definitely be me in another year." Heck, I'm all for swimming with sharks, but there needs to be a boat around in case, ya know, them sharks want to eat me. It's been four years since director Chris Kentis and producer Laura Lau scared the crap out of us with Open Water, and according to Variety, the two have finally decided on their follow-up project. Yup, and it once again has to do with sharks -- but not the kind that takes your limbs, I'm talking the kind that takes your money.

Kentis wrote and will direct the currently untitled legal thriller for Paramount Vantage, with Lau back onboard as producer. The story sounds pretty intriguing; essentially, it revolves around a woman who is arrested for a crime she didn't commit, but then gets "plunged into a state of confusion and psychological terror as she defends herself." See, defending yourself is always a bad move -- but if you don't got the cash, I guess it's the way to go. Apart from this, Kentis will also helm (while Lau produces) a project for Warner Bros. based on the WWII sinking of the USS Indianapolis. If you weren't previously aware of this story, you might have learned more about it recently during the Discovery Channel's very awesome Shark Week. I know they aired a two-hour docudrama about the incident, in which a crew of 900 were left stranded in the water for five days with a slew of blood-thirsty sharks. Variety says the legal thriller is eying a 2008 start, and there's currently no word on when Warners plans to kickoff the USS Indianapolis flick.

And you thought he was done with all those sharks. Chris Kentis, who helmed Open Water (but not the stupid sequel) and subsequently convinced some people never to go scuba diving ever again, has signed on to direct Indianapolis, an adaptation of Douglas Stanton's book In Harm's Way. Kentis will once again be teaming up with Open Water producer Laura Lau to finally bring the horrific real-life story to the big screen.

Some of you might remember the Indianapolis story from Jaws -- back in WWII, the U.S.S. Indianapolis sunk due to an attack from a Japanese sub. Of the 900 men on board, most of whom floated at sea for five grueling days, only 317 were found -- while the rest, well, there's a reason why they call them shark-infested waters. Warner Bros. has been dying (no pun intended) to get this project off the ground; at one point Mel Gibson was going to star, with Barry Levinson directing. Unlike Open Water (which had us right next to those two for almost the entire film while they desperately searched for a way to survive), Indianapolis will focus more on backstory, why no one answered the distress call and how the stranded military men were eventually found ... by accident. However, I'm sure they'll come a point where someone gets eaten by a shark -- I mean, that's the fun part, right?

An interesting note on Kentis: He was vacationing in Thailand when the Tsunami hit in 2004, and somehow managed to escape along with this wife and child. Does this dude attract danger or what?