Peter Berg’s Navy SEAL movie Lone Survivor finally mobilizes

So are Navy SEALs going to be the new vampires? It’s been over four years since we last heard about Peter Berg’s project LONE SURVIVOR, but casting is a good place to start if a director wants their long-gestating project to finally movie forward.  And to that end, an exclusive over at Deadline states that Berg is in talks with Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, and Ben Foster to play the three leads in his movie, which “tells the harrowing story of how Luttrell and his Navy SEAL team members fought to stay alive after being ambushed in Afghanistan in 2005 by Taliban forces during a covert mission in the Hindu Kush mountain region, where the team went to kill a terrorist leader.”

He picked up the rights to the book on which the movie will be based a while ago, with the deal being that he would direct BATTLESHIP first and then do LONE SURVIVOR.  Originally the studio was wary of the soldier-centric project perhaps being far from a financial success, but with the box office receipts for ACT OF VALOR and Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow working on a SEAL Team 6 project the timing actually seems pretty perfect for a successful soldier movie.  Or at least better than it was for Berg’s last military-themed effort THE KINGDOM back in 2007.

“Bin Laden’s death has cleared the way for this,” said Berg, “a movie that will be an unapologetically patriotic film that honors 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.”  Look for more new in the coming months as we move closer to LONE SURVIVOR’s fall start.

Edit: In the picture below are two members of the quartet Berg mentioned, with LONE SURVIVOR’s author Marcus Luttrell on the right and Mathew Axelson second from the left.  The other two gentlemen were on the chopper that was sent down while attempting a rescue mission.