This Movie About Whales Raising A Future Olympic Swimmer Needs To Get Made Immediately

Great movie idea or greatest movie idea? The Hollywood Reporter has the exclusive details:

Jon Turteltaub, best known for his work on Disney's National Treasure movies, has come aboard to develop Fox 2000's Beached as a directing vehicle.

Beached centers on a chubby 4-year-old child who falls overboard during a family outing, is raised by whales and goes on to become an Olympic swimmer. (No, it's not the Ryan Lochte story.)

Beached has been in development since 1997 and came in the form of a script from Ted Griffin, the writer of Steven Soderbergh's all-star Ocean's Eleven and more recently Tower Heist.

Although Betty Thomas was attached to direct at one point, the project has been dormant of late, and Turteltaub's involvement kick-starts it. No doubt the popularity of swimming at the recent Olympics and NBC's record ratings fueled the project's resurgence.

Sadly, this movie has been floating around Hollywood for 15 years and will probably never get made, due to unsafe levels of awesomeness and batshittery.

'National Treasure's' Jon Turteltaub to Develop, Direct Olympic Swimming Movie (Exclusive) [THR]