In 1959, nine people mysteriously died while hiking in Russia’s Ural Mountains. When their bodies were found, some were missing clothes, some had broken ribs and fractured skulls, and one of them was missing his tongue. With all due respect to the deceased, those details—and the fact that nobody has ever conclusively proved what happened to these people—makes this story perfect for a movie, and in 2013, director Renny Harlin actually made one. That film, Devil’s Pass, ended up being a mediocre Blair Witch Project knockoff, but in a testament to the power of a good, unsolvable mystery about dead hikers, Straight Up Films has picked up the movie rights to Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story Of The Dyatlov Pass Incident, a nonfiction account of the story from writer Donnie Eichar. Unlike Devil’s Pass, it sounds like the plan for the Dead Mountain movie is to make it more of a grim drama about these people and their final days, and less of a trashy thriller about whether or not they were killed by aliens, secret military experiments, or yetis.
Join the discussion...