“What the people involved in that rescue gave us was an object lesson in the possibility of coming together and really achieving something”: Ron Howard, Joel Edgerton and Tom Bateman on Thirteen Lives

Most people will be familiar with the rescue of a Thai football team and coach who were trapped in a cave back in 2018. However, the exact details of the rescue – and the almost unbelievable way it was achieved – are no doubt far well less known. Now, the film Thirteen Lives by the esteemed and versatile director behind movies such as Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and Rush, Ron Howard, is here to change that.

Using Hollywood faces (Colin Farrell, Viggo Mortensen, Joel Edgerton and Tom Bateman to name but a few) in surprisingly non-Hollywood-typecast roles, Howard’s film delves into a blow-by-blow account of how vast numbers of people from the Thai and international community came together against all odds to save a group of young men under impossible circumstances. The making of the film itself came to parallel the rescue it depicts, becoming a production that involved cooperation between international filmmakers and the Thai workers and locals who are at the heart of the story. Rather than about individual heroics and lone mavericks, this film captures what can be achieved when people work together, with the suspense and drama on par with a fictional thriller

The Upcoming had the pleasure of chatting to two of the film’s stars over Zoom ahead of the movie’s launch: Edgerton and Bateman. They spoke about preparing for their roles, the challenges in shooting in caves and diving equipment and why they felt it was important to tell the story of the rescue.

We also spoke to the director Howard and producer Vorakorn “Billy” Ruetaivanichkul about the practical elements of bringing the ambitious film together, their all-star cast and how the rescue and the film about it symbolised the best aspects of how cultures and people can join together across divides.