EXCLUSIVE: Christian Rivers has signed on to direct Into Thin Air, a feature drama that explores the unsolved mystery behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The film is a co-production of Illusion Media Entertainment, K. JAM Media, and Altit Media Group and it is being financed by Avi Nakash. He’s the owner of Arkia Airline, the second largest in Israel.

Rivers is the Oscar-winning visual effects wiz behind such Peter Jackson-directed films as King Kong, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, who made his feature directorial debut last year on Mortal Engines. The film is scripted by Jonas McCord, an Oscar-winning documentarian and investigative journalist with credits that include Malice and Ask The Dust, and produced by Oscar winner Barrie Osborne, McCord, Kia Jam, and Dean Altit. Exec producers are Avi Nakash, Dan Gordon and Jonathan Sanger.

The film weaves a narrative around the tragedy, following the efforts of a rogue investigator with a tragic past who teams up with an idealistic young journalist. Together, they uncover a corruption soaked conspiracy that spans between the men with their hands upon the wheel of power, and a lone pilot who vanished with a plane full of 227 passengers and 12 flight crew members in 2014. The plane disappeared after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to its destination, Beijing Capital International Airport.

Said Rivers: “I couldn’t be more excited to bring this story to the screen. In this modern age of technology and instant information there are very few mysteries of this kind. But at its heart it’s a human story of a man, trying to move past his own loss and find answers for those who are still suffering.”

Added McCord: “Dostoyevksy once said that ‘when reason fails the devil helps.’ If ever a story had the mark of the devil all over it, it’s the greatest aviation mystery of all time — the disappearance of Malaysian Airline flight 370.”

Rivers is repped by WME and attorney George Davis of Nelson Davis.