After making her directorial debut with 2011's In the Land of Blood and Honey, Angelina Jolie returns to the helm with the upcoming true story adaptation Unbroken. The project is based on Laura Hillenbrand's book that chronicles the incredible life of Louis Zamperini, and, as we can see in an extensive new featurette, this movie was literally a half-century in the making. Louis Zamperini's family members reveal that the studio had optioned his life story over 50 years ago, with Tony Curtis originally set to play the Olympic hero, World War II veteran and prisoner of war, but the project never got off the ground.

Many years later, Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand came across Louis Zamperini's story, and turned it into the best-selling non-fiction book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, which spent over 180 weeks on the New York Times best sellers list after its 2010 publication. The author herself recounts how she discovered this story in the featurette, while director Angelina Jolie revealed not only how she was inspired to make this movie, but how she learned that Louis Zamperini literally lived right above her in Los Angeles.

Jack O'Connell plays Louis "Louie" Zamperini, who, along with two other crewmen, survived in a raft for 47 days after a near-fatal plane crash in WWII-only to be caught by the Japanese Navy and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. Adapted from Laura Hillenbrand's ("Seabiscuit: An American Legend") enormously popular book, Unbroken brings to the big screen Zamperini's unbelievable and inspiring true story about the resilient power of the human spirit. Check out new footage and learn more about this incredible true story before Unbroken hits theaters on Christmas Day.