There’s an OmniMax movie on this that just finished playing at te Boston Museum of Scienc. I didn’t see it, but I believe most if not all of it was re-creation.
Andrew Wiles proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. Hey, I’d go see it.
Seriously, I saw an IMAX movie on the epic of flight or something and they briefly touched on the story of the Wright Brothers and all sorts of complications they had, including this rival almost beating them to the finish line. I thought at the time it would make for a great story and movie.
A few that would interest me (in addition to those posted above) :
[list]
[li]Boudicca’s rebellion[/li][li]the battle of the plains of Abraham (the conquest of Québec)[/li][li]a bio of Hannibal[/li][li]a bio of Winfield Scott[/li][li]the battle of Kursk[/li][li]the batle of Poltava[/li][li]Borodino[/li]Dino wars, the rivalry between Marsh and Cope
Operation Pedestal
A heavily escorted convoy of 14 ships has to run from Gibraltar through to Malta or the island will be forced to surrender. The most important ship in the convoy, the tanker S.S. Ohio, was so badly damaged she had to be towed into Valetta harbor sandwiched between two destroyers. Only 4 other frieghters made it through, and most of the escorting cruisers and an aircraft carrier were lost. The only thing that saved the convoy from being shot to bits by the Italian Navy were a submarine which attacked and damaged a cruiser and several Wellington bombers broadcasting spurious directions to other, non-exsistant bombers.
It’s Road Warrior on the high seas.
The Battle of the Java Sea would be a good one, too. Especially if the subsequent events were included such as the Battle of Sunda Strait and the frantic air and sea evacuations (including a B-17 rebuilt as the Japanese were sweeping the island and flown out by a US Sergeant and two airline pilots).
Ha! For once in this sort of thread, I was certain that nobody else would steal my idea. Picture this: A small island kingdom, in the middle of a growing Empire. One man singlehandedly defended that kingdom from the mightiest army in the world, and inspired fear in all his foes. Great movie, no?
Archimedes. His ideas were so successful, that the Roman sailors would scream in panic if they saw a single piece of rope aboard ship that they didn’t recognize, for fear that it was one of his devices. We’ve seen plenty of brave war heros, or strong ones, or tough, but it’s about time that we saw a smart hero. Of course, you could also throw in the bit about the counterfeit crown and the naked “Eureka!”, if you wanted.
The Ia Drang Valley
Simply because I am convinced that combat exposes both the merits and flaws in men, Hollywood ought to put together an honest film on the Ia Drang Valley fight in November 1965. There were two fights, one an almost Rourke’s Drift engagement by the First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry and three days later an other which was a catastrophe for the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry. LTG (then LTC) Harold Moore who commanded the 1st Bn.,7th Cav., has written a detailed and moving book with Joe Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once and Young.
THE ANNEXATION OF ARKANSAS, BAY-BE!
Nevermind. 
Since the 200th Anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition is coming up, I’m wondering if anyone will tackle that.
It’s an astounding tale, but one that I trust has never been done right. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone would do it justice. It’s just too clinical an expedition- it was done very well, and there really isn’t a love story in it, unless you want to count a french trapper impregnating a 13 year old girl who was enlisted to help with language translation and a bit of navigation.
“Only” two Indians were killed, which is probably not enough for Hollywood. Too, they would want to portray all the Indians as ‘noble savages’ which wasn’t exactly what the explorers found, if the Journals can be believed. Clark took his slave, York, which might be problematic in these ever so touchy times.
Now, I offer my directorial skills if they are needed. I’m quite certain I could do much better than anyone else. I work cheap, too. Let me know.
I am currently working (from time to time) on a script based on the raid on Zeebrugge in WWI. The whole event lasted just over an hour, and resulted in 8 Victoria Crosses (Britain’s highest military decoration) being awarded. The individual actions involved almost seem beyond belief. I’m aiming for keeping it as meticulously accurate as possible, although it looks as if I’ll have to play with the timing a bit to show everything I want (because of them happening more or less simultaneously in different places).
What I think would be most interesting is the idea of showing an entire military engagement in real time, which could be done in this case.
Also, the political machinations of the Admiralty at the time, and the character of Vice Admiral Roger Keyes (later Admiral of the Fleet the Baron Keyes of Zeebrugge and Dover, KCB) make for a compelling story for the action to be set against.
Now, no one steal the idea. But if you do, I’m well ahead of you in the research 
No one knows for sure how many people were killed, but it’s generally agreed that the explosion of the steamboat Sultana just north of Memphis in April 1865 was America’s worst maritime disaster ever, with a loss of at least 1500 lives.
The Sultana was a typical lower Mississippi steamboat, with rated legal capacity of 376 passengers. On April 21, 1865, she left New Orleans with between 75 and 100 passengers, on a regular run north to Memphis, Cairo, Evansville, Louisville, and Cincinnati. On April 24, she put in at Vicksburg, where the problems with the boilers were discovered. These were quickly repaired, but she stayed at Vicksburg much longer than had been expected. During that stay, in addition to her regular crew and passengers, as many as 2000 Union soldiers, recently released from Confederate prisoner-of-war camps like Cahaba and Andersonville, were put on board to be transported back to their homes in Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan, and Indiana. Weak, sick, half-starved soldiers filled every available space in the boat – the last known photograph shows the upper deck packed solid with men. On the 26th of April, she put in at Memphis, where a few lucky men disembarked. New problems with the boilers were found, and again repairs were hastily undertaken. She set off again, and sometime after midnight, just nine miles north of Memphis near Mound City, Arkansas, the boilers blew up. The flame and noise of the explosion were seen and heard back in Memphis.
The waters of the Mississippi in the springtime are icy cold, and the majority of the men on the Sultana were in no condition to survive them for long, being sick, weary, and ill-fed. Those who were not killed outright by the explosion were faced with the choice of being burned to death on board or drowning. A few hundred managed to find pieces of wood or other floating debris to cling to, and sufficient reserves of strength, to allow them to survive. Between five and six hundred were taken to Memphis hospitals, of which two hundred later died. Given the estimates of between 1900 and 2300 people on board at the time of the explosion, the death toll is estimated at between 1500 and 1900.
The Sultana disaster couldn’t have come at worse time, or in a worse place, for making news, however. President Lincoln had just been killed eleven days before, and the nation was still reeling from that blow and adjusting to a new president. The nation’s media centers were still New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, and these areas were essentially unaffected by the disaster – almost all the dead were from the Ohio River valley areas.
Novelist Donald Harington makes excellent use of the story of one Sultana survivor in the chapter on Mound City in his non-fiction work Let Us Build Us A City: Eleven Lost Towns. The story as lightly embellished by Harington could almost be filmed as is, though there are any number of approaches one could take to the story. While comparisons to Titanic would be inevitable, the public’s appetite for material related to the Civil War seems nearly insatiable, and this at least has the advantage of being an episode that’s not already familiar to everyone from American History classes.
Otto Preminger did a very fine movie on that subject: Exodus. Wonderful score, too.
Another favorite: the Battle of Trenton. A desperate, Delaware-crossing gamble on the part of Washington, so desperate that in one clash during the campaign Washington rode his horse between the British and American sides just as both fired. He and his horse were completely missed. In Trenton itself, Alexander Hamilton commanded a cannon firing down King Street, while James Monroe was wounded.
Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle.
Finland’s Winter War with the USSR. Though I think Rennie Harlin plans to do this, at least as part of a biopic of Mannerheim. http://www.mil.fi/tiedotus/talvisota_eng/
Maybe a movie about the Easter Uprising of 1916 in Ireland-Morgan Llyelywlen (I completely butchered that), wrote a fantastic book about it-1916. The sequel, sucked, however.
Historical events I’d like to see in a movie:
** - The Battle of Agincourt** (mentioned in some Joan of Arc movie, but not shown). I’d love to see a small band of British longbowmen stomp French kunnnnn-ig-its.
** - The Norman Conquest… of Sicily!** (little-known fact: they conquered to the south, as well…)
Something about life in Berlin, just after World War II, when the Wall wall being built. Make it a love story, if it need be, involving the two lovers being split by said Wall.
** - A biography on Tycho Brahe** (I’d pay good money to see it). Maybe play up the nose bit, to make it a comedy.
** - The Viking’s discovery of Vinland** (add battles with the ‘Skraelings’ to make it more interesting, but I’d like to stick to the facts in this case.).
** - The unification of Japan** (ehh, his name escapes me… Help? Who unified Japan?), or Germany (Otto von Bismarck’s doing, in part).
** - The Mongol invasion of Europe**.
There are more, but I need to look up a vital fact…
The final unifier was Tokugawa Ieyasu. He inherited, though, the effort of decades to that end by the warlords Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (not that Tokugawa didn’t make his own aignificant contributions).
As they say in Japan, “Nobunaga made the cake, Hideyoshi baked it, and Ieyasu ate it”.
With all the excellent suggestions in this thread (I’m especially fond of the Archimedes idea), it’s amazing that Hollywood keeps churning out crap like Tomb Raider instead.
Oh, and Spavined Gelding, We Were Soldiers Once… And Young is, in fact, being made (with title truncated). Shooting wrapped a little while ago, and they’re in post production for a holiday release (though it looks like they’ll be postponed). The writer/director is Randall Wallace, who wrote Braveheart and who has been very public about how Bruckheimer and Bay screwed up his script for Pearl Harbor. More information here.
Thought about some more potential movies :
[ul]
[li]Operation Tidal Wave[/li]On August 1, 1943, the USAAF attacked the Ploesti oilfields in a daylight low-level attack (and when I say low-level, I mean low-level, some planes came back with what looked suspiciously like grass stuck on their antennas :eek: ). 7 heavily-defended refineries were attacked (big flame explosions, more than enough to satisfy Hollywood’s love affair with napalm). The refineries were heavily defended (88s firing point blank, lots of light flak, a flak train, duels between the bomber gunners and the flak positions). The mission suffered heavy casualties (in the order of 20 %). Bonus, a sequel could be made about the POWs that were captured during the mission.
[li]The battle of Chickamauga[/li]In Fall 1863, the Confederacy had its last victory in this battle. The situation has everything to satisfy moviegoers : surprise, interesting characters, desperate situations, incompetence, bravery. Bonus, a sequel could be made about the battle of Chattannooga.[/ul]
And, waterj2, if Zeebrugge is not their cup of tea, there is another similar situation in WWII, maybe you could pitch the raid on St-Nazaire ?
The Johnstown Flood. One of the worst disasters in American history. A dam in the Pennsylvania mountains built by the steel kings of Pittsburgh breaks during a heavy rain storm and nearly wipes out an entire valley (and had it not been for a railroad bridge, it might have wiped out Pittsburgh as well). Great stuff!
How about one about the USS Indianapolis on its last voyage after delivering the atomic bomb and it got torpedoed? Haven’t read much about it, but the story’s surely got to be fascinating!
Or one about the Nazi’s attacking the Maginot Line? Despite what most people think, the Nazi’s were worried by that line.
I’m sure I’ll think of others in a bit.