A woman who was flying in another flight has claimed that she saw the missing Malaysian Airlines plane MH370 sinking near Andaman Islands
A woman who was flying in another flight has claimed that she saw the missing Malaysian Airlines plane MH370 sinking near Andaman Islands REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ

The producers of an Australian film of which the plot highly resembles the tragedy that struck the still missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 has decided to pull back the production of the movie out of respect to the victims, families and authorities affected by the incident.

"Out of sensitivity to the Malaysia flight situation, we've decided to put it on pause for now," Gary Hamilton, managing director of Arclight Films told hollywoodreporter.com. He noted the film bears many "uncomfortable similarities" with the way Malaysia Airlines MH370 went missing.

Titled Deep Water, Mr Hamilton's film is a follow-up to the film Bait 3D. It will show "a plane flying from Beijing to Sydney" crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

"Survivors of a plane crash face terror beyond reckoning as the plane is starting to sink into a bottomless abyss, and soon discover they're surrounded by the deadliest natural born killers on earth," the film's tagline in early promotional material read.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak told a media conference in Kuala Lumpur on Monday that based on new information, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which had 239 people on board, got crashed into the Indian Ocean, west of Perth, Australia. It got "lost with no survivors."

Alister Grierson, the film's director, and Arclight Films had began pre-production on Deep Water at Village Roadshow Studios in Queensland weeks before the real-life incident.

"We thought it wasn't the right time to make a film about a plane crash right now," Mr Hamilton said. "We have decided it is best to pull back on production of the film for a few months."

"The similarities and timing is interesting and I can see anecdotally the two things link up, it's a tricky thing," Mr Grierson said.

The production people didn't give any specific timeline as to when preproduction will resume. What's definite is that it take two years before the movie hits the cinemas.

Malaysia Airlines MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens on March 8 less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur. It was bound for Beijing carrying 239 people.

Global authorities have yet to specifically find the plane missing for 17 days now. Much debris however has been found in remote waters off Australia. Authorities suspect they might be part of the missing Boeing 777 plane.