GOSSIP HOTLINE

As Marc Forster’s biopic Machine Gun Preacher stumbles at the box office and Ralph Fiennes’ upcoming Shakespeare drama Coriolanus is more likely to play for the Academy crowd than general audiences, Gerard Butler is heading back toward action fare. He’s set to star with Sam Worthington and Matthew McConaughey in Iraq war movie Thunder Run,  a CG 3-D action-thriller from macho director Simon West (Con Air, Tomb Raider, The Mechanic).

Thunder Run is based on correspondent Davd Zucchino’s novel Thunder Run - The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad, which chronicles the true story of soldiers on the front line of this 2003 battle. Black Hawk Down scripters Robert Port and Ken Nolan are adapting the novel.

Freedom Films are producing alongside the Graphic Film Company. Hyde Park will handle international sales. Freedom Films’ Brian Presley says the film, which has been in development for five years, will be the “first ever conventional war film made to utilize this revolutionary facial and motion capture technology and state of the art CG and 3D.”

Thunder Run is the untold story of the dangerous and bloody capture of Baghdad by American Forces at the onset of the Iraq War.  In April 2003, three battalions and fewer than a thousand men launched a violent thrust of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles into the heart of a city of five million, igniting a three-day blitzkrieg, which military professionals often refer to as a lightning strike, or “thunder run.” In telling the story of the surprise assault on Baghdad- one of the most decisive battles in recent American combat history—this movie paints the harrowing picture of the soldiers on the front lines and the realities of modern warfare.