Hood takes on dog sledding

You can all but count Gavin Hood out of directing the second Wolverine flick. But then, considering what a downer that was, we can’t say we’re surprised.

Instead, Hood has turned to literature for his next flick. Namely Gay and Laney Salisbury’s The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Stories of Dogs and Men in a Race against an Epidemic .

Yeah, quite a title. We expect that’ll be sliced down to size when it eventually hits cinemas.

The book is set in 1952, and follows the true story of the 20 men and 200 dogs who journeyed 674 miles to deliver an antidote for diphtheria to the residents of Nome, Alaska.

Battling -60 degree temperatures and ice fog, their story grabbed the entire nation back in the day (well, TV was a bit crap back then, wasn’t it?).

Adapted by Sean O’Keefe and Will Staples of Apaches , this seems to be the ideal project for Hood, who no doubt wants people to forget his disappointing X-flick. Bring on the dogs!

Fan of humans and dogs overcoming great odds? Speak...

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.