Director Jon Turteltaub of “National Treasure” is tasked to produce a film on the origin of Greenpeace financed by Aurelius films. Taking over production for the project is the tandem of Jerry and Janet Zucker of Zucker Productions. The duo is no stranger to activism themselves with their “Proposition 71”, a California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative passed in 2004. Jerry Zucker is a devoted donor to progressive causes while Janet Zucker serves as co-chair for “The Science & Entertainment Exchange”.
The yet-to-be-titled Greenpeace project would cover the rise of the environmental movement seen from the eyes of organization founders, Bob Hunter and Rex Weyler. Serving as producer for the film is the same man who acquired the rights to written biographies of the Greenpeace inventors, Aurelius Films’ Matthew Jones. The screenplay for the film to be written by “The West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin would be based from Rex Weyler’s “Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World” and Bob Hunter’s “Warriors of the Rainbow: A Chronicle of the Greenpeace Movement”.
Janet Zucker shares her thoughts on the production saying, “We want to look at these unlikely heroes who became activists in spite of themselves. Jon likes to make big adventure movies. And we’ve found that the best way to reach people’s hearts and minds is through entertainment.”
The term Greenpeace came from the Greenpeace biography description of Bob Hunter back in 1971 as a “hippy journalist in Vancouver”.
