It’s been nearly four years since it was announced that Peter Berg would direct Universal’s Lone Survivor, based on the memoirs of Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell. Now Deadline reports that the project is moving forward and will begin shooting in January of 2012.
The film details Luttrell’s ordeal, heading into Afghanistan after a Taliban leader and emerging as the sole survivor.
Luttrell bonded with Berg, a fellow Texas native, who had used Navy SEALS in the making of The Kingdom, paving the way for Universal to buy the novel and underlying life rights for Berg’s Film 44, Akiva Goldsman’s Weed Road Productions and Barry Spikings’ Spikings Entertainment.
Berg, who’s next project Battleship adapts the Hasbro board game, has also allegedly asked one of that film’s stars, Taylor Kitsch, to play one four main SEAL characters in Lone Survivor.
“Bin Laden’s death has cleared the way for this,” Berg tells Deadline, “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 story of the Osama bin Laden mission itself, meanwhile, is moving forward as part of Kathryn Bigelow’s untitled Black Ops film and is set to star Joel Edgerton.
