'Ice Road Truckers' to become a scripted big-screen action movie

If you think The History Channel's Ice Road Truckers reality series would make a cool action flick, you're apparently not alone.


Twentieth Century Fox has secured the rights to use Ice Road Truckers' premise as the basis of a scripted action movie, Daily Variety reported Tuesday, with the film studio planning to hire a writer and assign a producer to the project "shortly."

Ice Road Truckers premiered on The History Channel last June, and the Deadliest Catch-like docu-reality series followed a group of six truck drivers navigating frozen terrain just miles from the Arctic Circle.

For two months, The History Channel filmed the six men as they traveled over frozen lakes that serve as roads and hauled crucial supplies to miners working at Canadian diamond mines located only miles from the Arctic Circle.

The drivers featured in Ice Road Truckers are responsible for supplying the diamond mines just outside of Yellowknife in Canada's Northwest Territory, and the terrain where the mines are located is extremely treacherous.  Jackknifing, breakdowns and accidents are the least of the drivers' troubles -- since they are driving over frozen lakes, the drivers never know when the ice beneath the wheels of the rigs they drive will give way, placing their lives in constant peril.


Ice Road Truckers' premiere broadcast hauled in 3.4 million overall viewers -- a ratings performance that made the series' debut the most-watched original telecast in The History Channel's own 12 year history.

The History Channel is currently filming Ice Road Truckers' second season.






About The Author: Christopher Rocchio