Jason Hall recently became quite the coveted screenwriter when his adaptation of American Sniper piqued the interest of both Bradley Cooper and Steven Spielberg, and now that Spielberg has committed to the project as his next film with Cooper in the lead role, Hall is setting up other future projects. On that note, DreamWorks in early talks with Hall to write an adaptation of author David Finkel’s non-fiction book Thank You For Your Service. The book examines the profound effect that the recent wars have had on the men and women in the armed services, specifically examining the effects of PTSD. Interestingly, Spielberg is apparently mulling over the possibility of reteaming with his Lincoln star Daniel Day-Lewis on the project. Hit the jump for more.
According to Deadline, Hall is in early talks to pen an adaptation of Thank You For Your Service, and the project is “something Spielberg likes” as a potential project on which to reunite with his Oscar-winning Lincoln star Daniel Day-Lewis. The report notes that the Spielberg talk is all early days, and it’s no secret that the director develops a number of projects at the same time, only to see a small portion of them come to fruition with him as the director. Spielberg is currently focused on making American Sniper his next film, and he’s also toying with Robopocalypse.
Spielberg had previously been poised to make the sci-fi adaptation Robopocalypse his Lincoln follow-up, but just as he was prepping a summer 2013 production start-date, he decided to postpone the project in order to further develop the script. Again, there’s no guarantee that Spielberg will direct Thank You For Your Service, and even if he does then Day-Lewis’ involvement is in no way a sure thing, but this is certainly a project to keep an eye on.
Read the synopsis for Thank You For Your Service below:
No journalist has reckoned with the psychology of war as intimately as David Finkel. In The Good Soldiers, his bestselling account from the front lines of Baghdad, Finkel shadowed the men of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion as they carried out the infamous surge, a grueling fifteen-month tour that changed all of them forever. Now Finkel has followed many of those same men as they’ve returned home and struggled to reintegrate—both into their family lives and into American society at large.
In the ironically named Thank You for Your Service, Finkel writes with tremendous compassion not just about the soldiers but about their wives and children. Where do soldiers belong after their homecoming? Is it possible, or even reasonable, to expect them to rejoin their communities as if nothing has happened? And in moments of hardship, who are soldiers expected to turn to if they feel alienated by the world they once lived in? These are the questions Finkel faces as he revisits the brave but shaken men of the 2-16.
More than a work of journalism, Thank You for Your Service is an act of understanding—shocking but always riveting, unflinching but deeply humane, it takes us inside the heads of those who must live the rest of their lives with the chilling realities of war. [Amazon]