While Ron Howard’s F1 racing drama Rush doesn’t open in theaters until next month, the filmmaker is already hard at work prepping his next project.  Filming begins in a few weeks on Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea, which tells the story of the real life sea disaster of the whaleship Essex, a harrowing ordeal that inspired Herman Melvile’s Moby Dick.  In 1819, the ship was rammed by an angry sperm whale in the South Pacific.  The surviving crew drifted for 90 days in three tiny whaleboats and encountered disease, hunger, and eventually cannibalism.  Chris Hemsworth leads a cast that includes Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, Tom Holland, and Brendan Gleeson.

While rehearsals for In the Heart of the Sea begin next week, it appears that Howard has had some significant work done on the script by his Oscar-nominated Frost/Nixon screenwriter Peter Morgan.  Hit the jump for more, including some official production photos.

Deadline reports that The Queen and The Last King of Scotland scribe Peter Morgan recently worked extensively on the In the Heart of the Sea script, which was initially written by Charles Leavitt.  This marks Howard and Morgan’s third time working together, as Morgan also wrote Frost/Nixon and Rush.  The nature of the rewrites is unclear, but filming is poised to begin on September 10th in the UK so one imagines Morgan’s work is nearly completed.

Additionally, just as he did with Rush, Howard has been making good use of his Twitter account in the weeks leading up to In the Heart of the Sea’s production start-date.  The filmmaker shared the following production images on his Twitter, giving fans a look into the design process of the film’s intricate ocean-set sequences.  Stay tuned to his Twitter, as I'm sure Howard will be sharing more photos once filming begins.

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