“This is the story I’ve lived with for ten years now, and I know it inside out,” says screenwriter-director Alex Parkinson of Last Breath, based upon the strength and ingenuity of the storytelling in the lauded 2019 documentary. “It was such a vast canvas I could paint the story on, much bigger than the documentary.”
In September 2012, saturation divers Chris Lemons, Dave Yuasa, and Duncan Allcock embarked on a routine expedition. Diving hundreds of feet underwater, a computer error set their ship helplessly adrift up above, severing the umbilical cable connecting Lemons to his oxygen, electricity, and communications. With only minutes of oxygen reserves remaining, Yuasa and Allcock raced against time to retrieve Lemons and bring him to safety.
The 2019 British documentary Last Breath, directed by Alex Parkinson and Richard da Costa, chronicled the events aboard and below the ship using archival footage, audio, reconstruction, and interviews.
Stewart le Maréchal and Al Morrow produced the documentary through their company, MetFilm. Inspired by the success of the documentary, le Maréchal and Morrow shared their film with the father-son producing team of Paul and David Brooks for consideration as a narrative feature. “I was totally mesmerized by it,” Paul Brooks recalls. “It’s about the best of humanity and how people just won’t give up. I think that’s just incredibly compelling.”
Paul and David Brooks developed the project with producer Jeremy Plager, who anchored the casting process. Plager and Paul and David Brooks joined up with Dark Castle Entertainment producers Norman Golightly and Hal Sadoff.
“Paul shared Last Breath with us and we immediately responded to it, not only because it’s an exciting movie, but it has these universal themes of humanity, hope, and perseverance,” says Golightly. “The best stories have the ability to thrill us, entertain us, make us think, and make us feel. Sometimes they can even inspire us. Chris’s story manages to do all of those things and then some.”
Based upon the strength and ingenuity of the storytelling in the documentary, Paul Brooks sought out Parkinson to co-write and helm the narrative adaptation.
Paul Brooks explains: “The documentary actually plays as this incredible thrill ride. We thought, ‘Well, isn’t the logical thing to do here to get Alex to direct the movie?’ He has a great feel for narrative, which is why the documentary was so good.”
Parkinson explains his initial interest in Lemons’ story: “I immediately connected with what Chris Lemons was going through, which speaks to the power of this story of hope and the human spirit. When people come together with a common goal, the most incredible things can happen.”
Parkinson, with writers Mitchell LaFortune and David Brooks, worked on a draft of the screenplay: “I aimed to do more than just remake the documentary,” Parkinson says. “I wanted to tell this remarkable story on the grandest scale possible, and explore new dimensions of the characters’ emotional journeys.”
David Brooks embraced an opportunity to explore a world that is unfamiliar to moviegoers. “It’s so rare to come across such a gripping story that feels truly original,” says David Brooks. “The world of saturation diving really hadn’t been explored in a narrative feature before, certainly not at this scale. I was further drawn to the uniqueness of the characters and the intimacy of their dynamics.”
“I felt this responsibility to keep it as true to the reality of what happened as possible. I want these people to be represented properly, because they did an incredible thing on that night,” adds Parkinson.
A heart-pounding film that follows seasoned deep-sea divers as they battle the raging elements to rescue their crewmate trapped hundreds of feet below the ocean’s surface. Based on a true story, Last Breath is an electrifying story about teamwork, resilience, and a race against time to do the impossible. It honors the selflessness and perseverance of a team of divers whose lives changed forever when an accident strands one of their own deep beneath the surface of the North Sea.
With the script in place, Parkinson and the producers of Last Breath searched for a cast that could accurately represent the heroism of the real-life divers
They found adventurous, willing partners in Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu, Finn Cole, and Cliff Curtis.
Paul Brooks collaborated with Harrelson on Bobby Farrelly’s Champions, and believed the actor might have an interest in this remarkable story. Brooks was correct: “Once I saw the documentary, I was already in,” Harrelson remembers. “I think the documentary speaks for itself. People love it. I loved it. It sure made me want to be a part of this.”
Barbie and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu reviewed the documentary to familiarize himself with the story. “When I watched it, I was absolutely taken aback by not only the story but also the introduction to the world of saturation diving, which was unlike anything that I had ever known. And then I learned that Alex Parkinson, who directed the documentary, was also doing the adaptation, and I thought, ‘Well, I’m definitely in.’”
Liu responded to the screenplay’s themes of personal responsibility and teamwork: “So much of this story is about that camaraderie that develops over time,” Liu says. “When the stakes are high and an incident happens, these divers are willing to go out and risk their own lives to make sure that nobody gets left behind.”
When Peaky Blinders star Finn Cole received the script, he noticed that it shared its title with the documentary. “I’d seen the documentary a year or so before and loved it. I was into diving beforehand, so the doc got me excited for the movie. I was really intrigued to see how this would translate into film,” says Cole.
The actors held their real-life counterparts in high regard, and sought to tell their story with integrity. “There is a responsibility because it’s a real story with these real characters. And hopefully we are all doing justice to that,” Harrelson says.
“I think that’s just such an incredible story,” adds Liu. “It’s such an honor to be a part of it and to get to tell it. For me, the enduring message of Last Breath is that of hope, perseverance and never giving up.”
“We ended up with the three actors we really wanted, and the chemistry between them was terrific,” Paul Brooks says. “They all got along fantastically, and I think you can see the chemistry on screen. It feels really authentic.”
Production on Last Breath began in February 2023 in the North Sea onboard the ship the real events took place on.
ALEX PARKINSON (Co-Writer, Director) is an Emmy-nominated director who is making his narrative feature directorial debut with Last Breath. Parkinson’s other work includes HBO Max and Channel 4’s documentary, Lucy The Human Chimp, which he both wrote and directed. It follows psychologist Janis Carter taking on the seemingly impossible task of giving a chimpanzee raised as a human a new life in the wild. Directing documentaries for more than 20 years, Parkinson has also made films for a number of global broadcasters including the BBC, ITV, National Geographic, Animal Planet, History and Travel.
DAVID BROOKS, p.g.a. (Co-Writer, Producer) earned a BFA in Film Production from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. His feature directorial debut, ATM, was released by Universal Studios in partnership with Netflix and IFC Films and received Comcast’s XFinity On Demand Award for Most Watched Independent Film (2012). While developing directing projects, David has continued to work as a producer on other features including voyeuristic horror film, The Den, released by IFC Midnight, The Boy Downstairs, a modern romantic comedy, which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and was released by Film Rise in partnership with HBO, and Prey for the Devil, a contemporary exorcism story based on true events for Lionsgate. Most recently David produced, Oh, Hi!, starring Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
MITCHELL LAFORTUNE (Writer) is a former intelligence officer who served four deployments to Afghanistan from 2007 to 2013. He started his intelligence career in the Army, developing counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he would be awarded a Battlefield Promotion for extraordinary efforts in a combat zone. After serving, Mitchell worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency, focused on Iranian foreign policy. He authored Presidential Daily Briefings and participated in military operations in Herat and Kabul in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. After leaving the Agency, Mitchell attended UCLA’s prestigious film school as a Pat Tillman Scholar. Based on Mitchell’s real-life experiences as an intelligence officer, he penned Kandahar, repping Gerard Butler’s re-team with his Angel Has Fallen filmmaker, Ric Roman Waugh. Open Road released the film wide Memorial Day Weekend in 2023. Mitchell recently completed Greenland: Migration, the sequel to the disaster thriller Greenland and has signed on to adapt the real-life story of Mike and Carlos Boettcher, father-son war correspondents and multi-Emmy and Peabody winners for Mandalay.
