Peter Weir is the director of "The Way Back," starring Colin Farrell, Jim Sturgess, and Ed Harris. The film, about the Soviet Gulags, is being released by Newmarket Films on December 29.

The winding path to production on THE WAY BACK was, in itself, a difficult journey.  The film’s core inspiration, Slavomir Rawicz’s The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom, published in 1956, and since translated into 30 languages, was originally optioned by The Manchurian Candidate star Laurence Harvey (who died at age 45) and was once set up at Warner Bros. as a vehicle for Burt Lancaster.