Warner Bros. has released a large amount of new images from the latest film from director Ron Howard. For his follow-up to the severely underrated Rush, Howard tackles an adaptation of the Nathaniel Philbrick book In the Heart of the Sea, which recounts the true story that inspired Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick. The story revolves around the whaleship Essex, which set sail in the early 1800s on a normal whaling job, only to find itself the target of an aggressive attack from a giant sperm whale. The ship sank, leaving its surviving crew stranded in lifeboats with scarce resources. Starving and lost, they were forced to turn to cannibalism, making the journey that much more harrowing.

Chris Hemsworth leads the film adaptation of the story as the Essex’s First Mate, with Benjamin Walker (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) filling the role of the captain and Tom Holland (the new Spider-Man) playing a young crew member who eventually recounts the harrowing tale to Melville (played by Ben Whishaw). It’s a fascinating story to be sure, and I’m most eager to see how Howard captures this thing visually with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle.

If you want to learn even more about In the Heart of the Sea, I visited the London set of the film two years ago, so peruse that coverage in the links below.

And for a closer look, take a gander at this large gallery of images below. The film also stars Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, Michelle Fairley, Charlotte Riley, and Frank Dillane and opens in theaters on December 11th.

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Here's the official synopsis for In the Heart of the Sea:

In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex was assaulted by something no one could believe: a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance.  The real-life maritime disaster would inspire Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.  But that told only half the story.  “Heart of the Sea” reveals the encounter’s harrowing aftermath, as the ship’s surviving crew is pushed to their limits and forced to do the unthinkable to stay alive.  Braving storms, starvation, panic and despair, the men will call into question their deepest beliefs, from the value of their lives to the morality of their trade, as their captain searches for direction on the open sea and his first mate still seeks to bring the great whale down.