Sony Pictures Entertainment and Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment have obtained the rights to make a movie about an ex-Marine who protected and helped rescue 244 people from a building flooded by Hurricane Katrina.John Lee Hancock will write and direct the film about John Keller, in a project based on a script by Adetoro Makinde of Back Door Films. The Times-Picayune quoted Overbrook executive Jeff Sommerville as saying Smith probably will play the part of Keller. He did not immediately return a call Thursday from The Associated Press. Sony spokesman Steve Elzer said in an e-mail that there has not been any talk about casting, and Smith is only involved as a producer.
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the costliest hurricane, as well as one of the five deadliest, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall. Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005, and crossed southern Florida as a moderate Category 1 hurricane, causing some deaths and flooding there before strengthening rapidly in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm weakened before making its second landfall as a Category 3 storm on the morning of Monday, August 29 in southeast Louisiana. It caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge. The most severe loss of life and property damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, which flooded as the levee system catastrophically failed, in many cases hours after the storm had moved inland. The federal flood protection system in New Orleans failed at more than fifty places. Nearly every levee in metro New Orleans was breached as Hurricane Katrina passed just east of the city limits.
Eventually 80% of the city became flooded and also large tracts of neighboring parishes, and the floodwaters lingered for weeks. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in the actual hurricane and in the subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane. Preliminary damage estimates were well in excess of $100 billion.
