Teen sailor Jessica Watson’s voyage to be made into major movie

The life of round-the-world teenage sailor Jessica Watson is to be turned into a major movie that will be filmed in Sydney and the Gold Coast next year.

Melbourne: The life of round-the-world teenage sailor Jessica Watson is to be turned into a major movie that will be filmed in Sydney and the Gold Coast next year.
The director of the Hollywood movies Soul Surfer and Bratz: The Movie, Sean McNamara, will shoot what``s described as an ````inspiring drama```` called True Spirit in Australia next year. The film, due for release late 2013, will be based on Watson``s book of the same name about sailing around the world solo and unassisted as a 16-year-old. She was at sea for 210 days before arriving in Sydney Harbour in May 2010. Watson, 19, said the prospect of someone else playing her was “a very strange idea” and says she was uncertain as to whether she wanted to be involved when first approached. But she said she had been inspired by their earlier film on Hamilton and agreed to come on board as a consultant. “It’s quite surreal but I’m really looking forward to doing my part to make it as accurate as possible,” the Herald Sun quoted Watson as saying at the Australian International Movie Convention on the Gold Coast. “I want to share it all with whoever they choose because that will help get the story across. It’s not stuff that you openly talk about all the time. It’s been a couple of years so I have closed a lot of those emotions up and I am looking forward to opening them again.” Watson admitted the movie would bring back both good and bad memories as well as bringing to light as-yet untold elements of the journey. “It’s going to be looking at it in quite a different way as well,” she said. “All those memories are part of it but there are so many more stories and so much more emotion in a story that everyone thinks they know,” she added. ANI