ELEMENTAL: THAT’S THE only word for it - ‘it’ being the link between Wolfgang Petersen’s last film, The Perfect Storm, and the one he is preparing now, Endurance. Of course, ever since he became internationally famous with Das Boot, Petersen has had a fondness for films about men battling the elements. And for those who might think I’m being politically incorrect, it has always tended to be men. In Storm, for instance, much play is made of the fact that Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s character is every bit as good a skipper as George Clooney’s. Probably better, in fact. But did she battle the big one on the Banks? No, she did not.

Anyway, like The Perfect Storm and Das Boot, Endurance is a story about chaps doing desperately brave (and sometimes just plain desperate) things under extreme circumstances. True things, as well: the film tells the story of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s disastrous expedition to the South Pole in 1915. The project has been hanging around (tempting to say ‘on ice’) for quite a while, with Columbia never quite convinced that there was an audience for a story about a group of people dying of cold in a featureless landscape. But, if Perfect Storm proved anything, it’s that you didn’t need a happy ending to have a hit.

What is more, Endurance’s prospects warmed up considerably in early April. National Geographic Films’ new feature production arm came on board to partner Columbia on the project, and screenwriter Steven Zaillian was hired to do a final polish.

Zaillian’s most recent high-profile collaborations have been with Steven Spielberg (he won an Oscar for the Schindler’s List script) and Martin Scorsese, for whom he worked on The Gangs of New York before teaming up with Ridley Scott on Black Hawk Down.

The story centres on how the British explorer’s ship was crushed in the ice, leaving him and his crew to attempt to escape Antarctica on a small, self-built boat in the middle of winter - an undertaking which makes conditions on board the ‘Andrea Gail’ sound almost luxurious.

Franzoni

No cast members or start dates have yet been mentioned, and even Petersen is apparently keeping his options open: he is reportedly working with screenwriter David Franzoni - who, just to tie up the loose ends, wrote Ridley Scott’s last movie but one, the Oscar-winning Gladiator - on a historical epic about which no one is saying anything at the moment. Except, of course, that it’s historical.

Meanwhile Perfect Storm star Clooney is rumoured - nothing more than that at this stage - to be returning to what we all thought was his least favourite role: that of the caped crusader, which he played in the unrapturously received Batman & Robin.

The whole Batman franchise, as readers of these pages will recall, is busy being renewed by enfant terrible Darren Aronofosky as a follow-up to his addiction saga, Requiem for a Dream. And it was Aronofosky who told someone (who then told Le Film Français) that George would be playing Bruce Wayne in his Batflick, which bears the title Year One. Let no one say I don’t source my rumours.