Back in 2007, Hancock helmer Peter Berg signed up to make a film called Lone Survivor, however it quietly got dropped as he concentrated on other projects, such as his aborted Dune remake and his upcoming board-game adaptation, Battleship.
However now Deadline reports he’s returning to the project, and it’s no coincidence the news comes so soon after the death of Osama Bin Laden. The project is based on the non-fiction book by Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, which recounts a mission his team undertook to kill a terrorist leader, although they were ambushed in the Hindu Kush mountains and struggled to stay alive. The story is quite similar to the successful SEAL Team Six mission which resulted in the death of terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden. Peter Berg has said it was Osama Bin Laden’s death that revived this project at Universal Pictures.
He says, “They leaned right into it with me. Bin Laden’s death has cleared the way for this, a movie that will be an unapologetically patriotic film that honours and pays homage to an incredible group of badass guys who do this. The film will be a bit like Black Hawk Down, but it will focus on the quartet, which is fewer guys than that film. The mission was similar to the assassination mission that got Bin Laden, but things got complicated when they ran into three kids and an old man. Under the rules of engagement, they could have killed them, but they decided to let them go and take their chances, even though they knew these people would likely talk.”
There’s no news on when the movie might shoot, although with Kathryn Bigelow planning to film her movie, which will more directly deal with the hunt for Osama, this summer, Universal will presumably want to get things going quickly.