Everyone loves Navy SEALs, including Taylor Kitsch and director Peter Berg

Before the Navy SEALs’ widely reported and rightfully praised successes snapping sniper shots through Somali pirates and putting holes in Osama Bin Laden, most people were probably more familiar with them from novels, videogames and reruns of certain Charlie Sheen and Steven Seagal flicks.

Now all the movie studios want to put these hardcore American military badasses (with due respect to all the other asskickers in the Armed Forces) on the big screen. Kathryn Bigelow has Joel Edgerton hunting Bin Laden (SPOILER: they get him), Disney wants their own SEAL TEAM SIX project, and now Peter Berg is adapting Marcus Luttrell’s book LONE SURVIVOR.

The story documents the 2005 Afghanistan operation of a SEAL team, and their search for an Al Qaeda leader in the mountainous Pakistani border. The mission goes violently pear-shaped, leaving Luttrell alone, wounded and on the run from Al Qaeda assassins. The book also chronicles Luttrell’s career and the insanely rigorous SEAL (that’s for SEa, Air and Land) training.

Ironically, Berg wrote the script a few years ago and agreed to make BATTLESHIP for Universal with the stipulation that they let him make LONE SURVIVOR immediately after. Now that SEALs have been hitting the headlines with their evil-erasing exploits, he should have plenty of studio support. The filmmaker previously visited the Middle East with the tension and gritty gunplay of THE KINGDOM.

Berg has asked his BATTLESHIP star Taylor Kitsch to stay in the Navy and play one of LONE SURVIVOR’s real heroes. The project is expected to begin filming in January.