Merrick here...

I really enjoyed MOON and have been eagerly anticipating director Duncan Jones' next project. Now we know what that will be...

ESCAPE FROM THE DEEP.

I hope they change that title; sounds like SyFy Saturday Night programming.

Project is an adaptation of Alex Kershaw's book about the real-life WW2 story of the U.S. Navy submarine USS Tang, which was hit by one of its own torpedoes and sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The crew members then had to escape from their iron coffin while enemy depth charges were being dropped from above and swim 180 feet to the surface.

...explains THIS ARTICLE in Variety.

Hit by your own torpedo...sunk to the bottom of the ocean...gotta escape...depth charges going off around you...good God.

Kershaw's book can be found HERE, and below you'll find a snippet from THIS Wiki entry on the subject, which further illustrates the awfulness of the whole affair.

Even though the following recounts real-life events, these would be considered SPOILERS in the narrative sense:

At 0230 on the morning of 25 October, the twenty-fourth, last torpedo was fired. It broached and curved to the left in a circular run. Tang fishtailed under emergency power to clear the turning circle of the torpedo, but it struck her abreast the aft torpedo room approximately 20 seconds after it was fired. Tang sank by the stern. Those who escaped the submarine were greeted in the morning with the bow of the transport sticking straight out of the water. Nine survivors, including the commanding officer, were picked up the next morning by a Japanese destroyer escort. They spent the remainder of the war in prisoner of war camps.

The explosion was violent, and people as far forward as the control room received broken limbs. The ship went down by the stern with the after three compartments flooded. Of the nine officers and men on the bridge, three were able to swim through the night until picked up eight hours later. One officer escaped from the flooded conning tower, and was rescued with the others.

The submarine came to rest on the bottom at 180 feet (55 m) and the men within crowded forward as the aft compartments flooded. Publications were burned, and all assembled to the forward room to escape. The escape was delayed by a Japanese patrol, which dropped depth charges, and started an electrical fire in the forward battery. Thirteen men escaped from the forward room, and by the time the last made his exit, the heat from the fire was so intense that the paint on the bulkhead was scorching, melting, and running down. Of the 13 men who escaped, only nine reached the surface, and of these, five were able to swim until rescued. A total of 74 men were lost.

When the nine survivors were picked up by a destroyer escort, there were victims of Tang’s previous sinkings on board, and they tortured the men from Tang. O'Kane stated, "When we realized that our clubbing and kickings were being administered by the burned, mutilated survivors of our handiwork, we found we could take it with less prejudice." The nine captives were retained by the Japanese in prison camps until the end of the war, and were treated by them in typical fashion.

In the last attack, Tang had sunk Kogen Maru and Matsumoto Maru. During her brief career, Tang was officially credited with sinking 24 Japanese ships which totaled 93,824 tons. Tang was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 8 February 1945.