Navy SEALs are so trendy right now. No, we don’t mean hipsters have been spotted sporting SEAL uniforms (because they’d probably get duffed up for that), more that the likes of box-office success Act Of Valor, Kathryn Bigelow’s Bin Laden film and the activities of the real-life SEAL Team Six have shoved them back into the pop culture consciousness in a big way. Peter Berg will no doubt be hoping that the momentum keeps going, as he’s now in talks with Mark Wahlberg and Ben Foster for Lone Survivor.
Berg, who has been spending most of his recent time working on Battleship, adapted Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson’s book after spending time with a SEAL team for a month in Iraq. The plot follows four members of a squad (Berg has already been talking to his Battleship star Taylor Kitsch about playing one of the other roles) who run into three kids and an old man in 2005. They choose to let them live, and the mission ended up aborted. But the SEALs then came under attack by around 250 al Qaeda soldiers, resulting in the deaths of 15 troops and the loss of one rescue helicopter. Luttrell ended up the only survivor, and that’s the role Wahlberg is on to play.
Emmett/Furla Films is putting together the financing with Universal distributing, and Berg wants to get boots on the ground sometime in the autumn, once he’s finished the long tour of duty promoting Battleship. That one sails into cinemas on April 11.
In related Wahlberg news, he’s also told Shortlist magazine that he’s looking to keep the remake train chugging along for a while. His latest target? Norwegian thriller Headhunters, based on the book by Jo Nesbo. He’s already been talking to Morten Tyldum and the rights holders about getting something going, but it remains to be seen if he succeeds. The original film, by the way, lands here on April 6.