Universal Pictures announced today that it will be releasing director Peter Berg’s (The Rundown) Navy SEAL film Lone Survivor on January 10, 2014.  Based on the bestselling non-fiction book of the same name, the film tells the story of four Navy SEALs on an ill-fated covert mission to neutralize a high-level Taliban operative who are ambushed by enemy forces in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan.  The film’s impressive cast includes Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, and Eric Bana.

Berg and Kitsch are coming off of last summer’s bomb Battleship, but both have proven themselves to be quite talented in the past, so hopefully Lone Survivor is a return to form.  The film will likely open in New York and Los Angeles at the end of December to qualify for awards season, and will face off against the Sylvester Stallone/Robert De Niro boxing film Grudge Match and the Lionsgate horror pic Jessabelle when it opens wide on January 10th.