Way back in 2011, Jerry Bruckheimer started going around Hollywood trying to get “Horse Soldiers” off the ground. And if you want to know how tough things are in the industry, even the legendary producer has seen a half-decade go by without anybody taking a bite. But now the project is finally getting off the ground thanks to Black Label Media (“La La Land,” “Sicario“) and has two compelling actors in the lead roles.
Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon will star in the Ted Tally (“The Silence of the Lambs”) and Peter Craig (“The Town”) penned project, based on the book by Doug Stanton, that tells the story of an elite Special Forces squad which invaded Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. Here’s the book synopsis:
Horse Soldiers is the dramatic account of a small band of Special Forces soldiers who secretly entered Afghanistan following 9/11 and rode to war on horses against the Taliban. Outnumbered forty to one, they pursued the enemy army across the mountainous Afghanistan terrain and, after a series of intense battles, captured the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, which was strategically essential to defeat their opponent throughout the country.
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The bone-weary American soldiers were welcomed as liberators as they rode into the city, and the streets thronged with Afghans overjoyed that the Taliban regime had been overthrown.
Then the action took a wholly unexpected turn. During a surrender of six hundred Taliban troops, the Horse Soldiers were ambushed by the would-be POWs. Dangerously overpowered, they fought for their lives in the city’s immense fortress, Qala-i-Janghi, or the House of War. At risk were the military gains of the entire campaign: if the soldiers perished or were captured, the entire effort to outmaneuver the Taliban was likely doomed.
Commercials director Nicolai Fuglsig will be making his debut feature with the project, and we’ll see when it actually gets in front of cameras. Both Hemsworth and Shannon are quite busy, with the former currently lensing “Thor: Ragnarok,” with “Avengers: Infinity War” on the horizon, and the latter recently set for “The Current War.”