Ron Howard is recreating the harrowing 2018 Thai cave rescue.
In the first trailer for Prime Video’s Thirteen Lives, Colin Farrell, Viggo Mortensen and Joel Edgerton play the expert cave divers who rescued 12 soccer players and their coach from the flooded Tham Luang cave system in Thailand.
As the men plan out their dive, Colin’s character John Volanthen warns, “It looks easy but when it’s flooded, it’s impossible.”
And their mission to save all 13 people is made all the more difficult by non-stop rain and high water levels, which prevent the boys from swimming out of the cave. The only way the divers can remove the boys safely was by sedating them and swimming through the cave with their bodies, one by one. As one of the men says, “It’s insane. It’s unethical. It’s illegal.”
But ultimately, it was their only choice. While one diver from the Thai Navy SEALs died during the rescue and another died from a blood infection more than a year later, all 13 of the boys were saved 18 days after they first entered the cave.
