In today's non-Marvel news that sounds like Marvel news, Brad Pitt is set to star in War Machine, a Netflix original movie adapted from the late Michael Hasting's best-selling book, "The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan." Produced by Netflix and Pitt's Plan B, the David Michôd-directed satirical comedy takes aim at the American military industrial complex. War Machine is, in Michôd's words, "a big, bold movie about the whole sprawling, complex, cumbersome and crazy machinery of modern war and the many lives it touches.”
From the press release:
Inspired by the best-selling book The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan by the late Michael Hastings, War Machine concerns a four star, “rock star” general whose lethal reputation and impeccable track record vaults him to command the American war in Afghanistan. Determined to win the “impossible” war once and for all with a radical new approach, the general and his motley staff of commanders and press advisers race across the globe navigating delicate international alliances and troop requests, the charged battlefield of Washington politics, the voracious appetite of the media, and the day-to-day management of the war itself – all the while struggling to stay connected to the lives of men and women out in the field.
Though the press release offers the film up as a satirical comedy, I'm curious as to how strong the tone is going to be. Are we in Wag the Dog and The Men Who Stare at Goats territory? Or are we more along the lines of Catch-22, MASH, or even Dr. Strangelove? However the tone ends up, this is sure to be a big attention grabber with Pitt at its lead and the seemingly infinite reach of Netflix built in. War Machine is expected to start principal photography this August before rolling out to Netflix members and in select theaters sometime in 2016.