A decade after Luna first showed up in Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island’s favourite young orca is going Hollywood.

The killer whale whose life story was chronicled in the documentary Saving Luna is heading to the big screen with Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson on board as executive producers.

Reynolds, 33, has signed on as narrator and will co-executive produce the documentary The Whale with Johansson, his wife, and Eric Desatnik. Local filmmakers Suzanne Chisholm, 40, and Michael Parfit, 63, directed the new film, an 89-minute reworking of their acclaimed 2007 documentary about the killer whale who mysteriously appeared in Nootka Sound in 2001 after being separated from his pod on the west coast.

The Canadian actor reportedly became involved because he felt a personal connection to the story set so close to his hometown of Vancouver. Parfit himself narrated Saving Luna, the couple’s account of the playful whale whose antics on Gold River’s docks delighted tourists, baffled scientists, angered fishermen and boaters, and sparked a “tug of whale” between Department of Fisheries and Oceans officials and Mowachaht/Muchalaht band members.

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