Almost as quickly as the floodwaters rose in the cave where 12 boys and their soccer coach were trapped for more than two weeks in northern Thailand in July, filmmakers and authors raced to tell their story. On Tuesday, the video streaming giant Netflix and the production house that made the film “Crazy Rich Asians,” SK Global Entertainment, announced the acquisition of the rights to the boys’ story. The project will be directed by Jon M. Chu, who directed “Crazy Rich Asians,” the first major Hollywood film with a majority Asian cast and crew since “The Joy Luck Club,” and Nattawut Poonpiriya, a Thai director known for his 2017 film “Bad Genius.”John Penotti, the president and co-chief executive of SK Global, said it has not been decided whether the project will be a feature film or a mini-series. “We’re going to do our best to accurately represent what happened,” Mr. Penotti said in an interview, adding that the company plans to film in Thailand and to “cast appropriately.”

Source: International New York Times April 30, 2019 22:57 UTC