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Angelina Jolie, along with her five children, is now in Syndey, Australia, prepping to begin shooting her second feature as a director, Unbroken, at the city’s Fox Studios.
According to local press, Jolie and the kids arrived in Australia Friday and visited the Sydney Aquarium on Sunday. Jolie-Pitt pere, Brad Pitt, is currently shooting David Ayer‘s World War II action-drama Fury in the U.K.
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Jolie’s Unbroken project brings a welcome dose of star power to Fox Studios, which hasn’t seen a high-profile Hollywood endeavor since Hugh Jackman‘s The Wolverine shot there last year, and Baz Luhrmann‘s Great Gatsby brought Leonardo DiCaprio to town in 2011.
Unbroken is an adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand’s acclaimed 2010 book of the same title about World War II hero Louis Zamperini. The script was written by Ethan and Joel Coen from previous drafts by William Nicholson and Richard LaGravenese.
Zamperini was a Los Angeles high school track star who raced in the 1936 Berlin Olympics before joining the war effort. In 1943, his Air Force plane crashed in the Pacific. He survived without food and water for 47 days, enduring shark attacks, aerial attacks and hunger before washing ashore on a Japanese island behind enemy lines, where he was held as a prisoner of war for two years and tortured by his captors.
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British actor Jack O’Connell, best known for his role on the U.K. series Skins, will play Zamperini. Jolie is producing with Matthew Baer and Erwin Stoff.
Unbroken, a Universal Pictures film, is Jolie’s second attempt behind the camera. She made her directorial debut with 2011’s In the Land of Blood and Honey. This will be her first time helming a project for a major studio. It is scheduled for a December, 2014 release.
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