Yep, Michael Bay left behind his beloved CGI and “Transformers” series for a geopolitical drama. Titled “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” the film is based on Mitchell Zuckoff’s book about the 2012 attack on an American compound in Libya where six members of a security team fought to defend the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The assault in the wake of 9/11 left U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens dead.
Bay has left “Transformers” before and returned to the series. He shot the muscle-head crime drama “Pain And Gain” in between “Transformers” movies and it wasn’t really much of a thing for him — at least he shot it and turned it around fast, no doubt because there was hardly any major VFX. Bay did the same thing with ’13 Hours’: it started shooting in April this year and it’s already due at the top of 2016.
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The film stars James Badge Dale, John Krasinski, Toby Stephens, Pablo Schreiber, Max Martini, David Denman, Dominic Fumusa, and Freddie Stroma, and is apparently not just about the attack itself, but how the security team struggles to make sense out of the chaos. Adapted by Chuck Hogan (“The Strain,” author of “The Town”), one has to wonder if Bay has the finesses for this kind of action drama. The action, sure, but what about the rest of it? We’ll find out soon enough. ’13 Hours’ is only six months away and lands in theaters January 15, 2016, by Paramount Pictures. Watch the first trailer below and a red-band version, too.