With the fate of his tenure as Batman seemingly a hot-button matter of discussion every couple few weeks, Ben Affleck is looking to line up his directorial Live by Night follow-up. The Tracking Board reports that Affleck is in early talks to direct the Afghanistan War movie Red Platoon for Sony.
Based on the New York Times bestselling memoir by Clinton Romesha, Red Platoon is a firsthand account of the fourteen-hour firefight at the Battle of Kamdesh. On October 3, 2009, the Taliban made a large-scale move after years of smaller attacks, sending a force of 300 men to Command Outpost Keating -- a controversially remote and difficult to defend outpost -- where Staff Sargeant Romesha lead a small band of soldiers in a defense and counterattack against the impossible odds.
Reigning Best Actor winner Casey Affleck is being eyed for the lead role, which would mark the first time the pair have worked together since Casey starred in his brother's breakout directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone. Since then, Ben has been a favorite in-house player at Warner Bros. beginning with his critically acclaimed follow-up film The Town and winning Best Picture for Argo, so the deal would also be a major win for Sony even if Live by Night was a rare misstep for Affleck's filmmaking career.
Josh Bratman of Immersive Pictures is producing Red Platoon with George Clooney and Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Pictures, as well as Lone Survivor's Kerry Foster. The most recent draft of the script comes from Adam Cozad (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit), but the report suggests Affleck may bring on his own creative team if he signs the deal to rework the script in his vision.
Here's the official synopsis for Red Platoon (via Penguin Random House):
In 2009, Clinton Romesha of Red Platoon and the rest of the Black Knight Troop were preparing to shut down Command Outpost (COP) Keating, the most remote and inaccessible in a string of bases built by the US military in Nuristan and Kunar in the hope of preventing Taliban insurgents from moving freely back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three years after its construction, the army was finally ready to concede what the men on the ground had known immediately: it was simply too isolated and too dangerous to defend.
On October 3, 2009, after years of constant smaller attacks, the Taliban finally decided to throw everything they had at Keating. The ensuing fourteen-hour battle—and eventual victory—cost eight men their lives.
Red Platoon is the riveting firsthand account of the Battle of Keating, told by Romesha, who spearheaded both the defense of the outpost and the counterattack that drove the Taliban back beyond the wire and received the Medal of Honor for his actions.
