Failed round the world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst is to be remembered in a movie from The Theory of Everything director James Marsh
Colin Firth will star as Crowhurst.
The scipt is being written by Scott Z Burns, whose work has included The Bourne Ultimatum, The Informant!, Contagion and Side Effects.
Based on a true story the as yet unnamed film will tell the tale of Donald Crowhurst, whose attempt to single handidly circumnavigate the world in 1968 ended catastrophically.
Crowhurst was trying to market a radio direction finder called the Navicator that he had developed.
Racing against Robin Knox-Johnston, Nigel Tetley, Bernard Moitessier, Chay Blyth, John Ridgway, William King, Alex Carozzo and Loïck Fougeron. He setting off in Teignmouth Electron, his 40-foot (12 m) trimaran
But the somewhat unskilled yachtsman made slow progress and began to fall badly behind his more accomplished contemporaries
Realising he was never going to do well in the race he decided to falsify his lataitude and longitude each day and lurk close enough to the race return track so that he join the fleet on their way back to the UK.
His fake position reports had everyone thinking that he was winning the race and a hero’s welcome was being planned for his return.
Sadly weeks later Teignmouth Electron was discovered unmanned and drifting.
Crowhurst was assumed to have drowned himself, his own log book betraying his actions.