B-D has an exclusive report that Viggo Mortensen and Philip Seymour Hoffman are in talks to join the cast of Vanikoro, written and directed by Xavier Gens (Hitman).

The Hitman director told B-D in their video interview with the director that Vanikoro, which is based on a true story, will be like Peter Jackson’s King Kong crossed with The 13th Warrior and Cannibal Holocaust.

No word yet which characters Mortensen and Hoffman will play.

The film is based on a naval expedition led by French explorer La Perouse which ended in the shipwreck of two French Navy vessels — Boussole and Astrolabe — on the island of Vanikoro in the South Pacific in 1788. Both ships were destroyed, but survivors managed to salvaged enough of Astrolabe to build a small ship and sail off from the island (what became of them is unknown). Two other men stayed behind on the island and survived until the early 1800s, years before the remains of the shipwreck were discovered.

In other Gens-related news, Dark Horizons sites French website Le Film Francais as stating that Gens may direct New Line’s planned Conan the Barbarian remake.

[Photo credit: "Boussole" & "Astrolabe", study 3 watercolour by John Pendray]