Gaghan is repped by CAA and Steve Warren at Hansen Jacobson. It is a honor to be part of this great journey and to help Stephen and Amazon bring it to the screen.” William Finnegan is the author of Cold New World, A Complicated War, Dateline Soweto, and Crossing the Line. It has pure cinema written through every page.

He knows this world, but it has been our conversations of all the meaning, heartbreak, and discovery that lies beyond the waves that made me see this was more than a film. Said Hope, who moved out of the executive suite at Amazon to return to his producing roots: “Like Bill, Stephen is in a love affair with the water. Finnegan then spent four years abroad, traveling in Asia, Australia, and Africa. Finnegan spent the next four years taking seasonal jobs and working on an MFA in creative writing at the University of Montana. And I’m so happy to be partnering with Ted and Amazon to bring it to the screen.” During his youth he took up surfing, which became a lifelong passion he still practices off Long Island when at home. Surfing is the through line, the one constant in a peripatetic life. It’s one of those rare books that once you read it you can’t stop thinking about it. William Finnegan released Barbarian Days last summer, and though his reporting usually focuses on everything but surfingfrom Peruvian gold miners to Mexican drug cartelshe's no stranger to. Before, during and after all those careers, in nearly every stage of his life, Finnegan has surfed. About two years into the voyage, having exhausted his savings from working on the railroad long ago, he landed a job teaching. Probably because it’s not really about surfing, it’s about time, and mortality, and how a deep, guiding passion can hold us back and propel us forward in unpredictable ways. By Finnegan's account, he was the third person ever to surf it.

“Bill is both, and he has written about surfing in a way that is interesting to non-surfers.

“There are great surfers and there are great writers, but so rarely is this the same person,” Gaghan said. Scott Cooper To Write & Direct Limited Series ‘Angels & Demons’ For Black Bear Television As Company Ramps Up

William finnegan surfing