Japan’s The Kadokawa Corporation has set Setsuro Wakamatsu to direct and Koichi Sato and Ken Watanabe to star in Fukushima 50, a feature film about Japan’s 2011 nuclear plant disaster, when a post-earthquake tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi facility and caused a meltdown of the core reactors.

The film, based on Ryusho Kadota’s book On the Brink: The Inside Story of Fukushima Daiichi and adapted for the screen by Yoichi Maekawa, centers on the workers including shift supervisor Isaki (Sato) and site superintendent Yoshida (Watanabe), who risked their lives and stayed at the plant to prevent total destruction of the overheating reactors and minimize devastation that could have impact the lives of the 50 million people who lived within 150 miles of the plant. The workers who returned were dubbed the “Fukushima 50” by the media.

“The Fukushima accident shook not only the people of Japan but also around the world,” said Wakamatsu, whose credits include 2009’s The Unbroken, about the 1985 plane crash in Japan that killed 520, the worst accident in Japan’s aviation history; it also starred Watanabe. “This film is about the power plant workers on the front line who faced an unprecedented crisis and risked their lives to save their families, their hometown and avert a disaster of global magnitude.”