A few years back, **Black Hawk Down **proved that Jerry Bruckheimer isn’t all about family-friendly fare, whiz-bang entertainment and popcorn-peddling. It’s been a while since he dipped his toes into more adult waters (Veronica Guerin in 2003, to be precise), but it seems that he’s heading that way with his latest project, Horse Soldiers.
Bruckheimer and Disney today acquired the rights to the forthcoming book by Doug Stanton, which is subtitled, The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan. From that, you should be able to guess that it’s a true-life tale about a group of special forces soldiers and CIA operatives who did, indeed, wage war on the Taliban… on horseback.
The centrepoint of their campaign against local Afghan warlords came when the horse soldiers, as they were dubbed, held off an ambush while negotiating the surrender of hundreds of Taliban troops. Sounds very Black Hawk Down to us.
It’s early days yet – no director is attached – but this sounds particularly intriguing. Obviously, the scope for jingoism is there, but let’s hope that Bruckheimer can exercise restraint. Insert your own ‘first time for everything’ gag here.