Stephen Daldry to tackle Everest

 Variety reports that out director Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot) will direct Everest, from a script by Michael Cristofer, for Universal and Working Title Pictures. The film will tell the story of disastrous attempts to climb Mt. Everest in 1996, when three expeditions were hit by an intense blizzard. While Jon Krakauer's best-selling nonfiction book Into Thin Air deals with the same incident, Cristofer and Daldry will conduct their own research and interviews to tell the story.