With Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch and Taylor Kitsch already on board for Peter Berg's Navy SEAL flick "Lone Survivor," you might think the cast couldn't get any beefier. But that's where you're mistaken.
Eric Bana will put on his action movie shoes, joining the man-tacular cast of the upcoming film. Based on the book by former SEAL Marcus Luttrell, the film will tell the true story of an incident in 2005 when his team came under attack from Taliban forces in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan. The team was on a mission to kill a terrorist leader very close to Osama Bin Laden and along the way they ran into three kids and an old man, who under the rules of engagement they could have killed. They let them go, and whether they talked or not, the team was suddenly under fire from 250 heavily armed Al Qaeda soldiers (they even brought down a rescue helicopter that came in to try and evacuate the SEAL team).
You might wonder why Universal is backing another movie from Berg, especially after "Battleship" soaked the studio to a loss of $80 million. Well, dude was smart enough to set this up in a kind of one-for-you, one-for-me deal back in 2009. And it looks like everyone is keeping their word. Of course, Bana made his name on another military flick, Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down," so this will be somewhat familiar territory.
Lensing begins kicks off next month, and that's probably why Hirsch couldn't star in "A Long Way Down" and was replaced by Aaron Paul. [THR]