Steven Spielberg No Longer Directing AMERICAN SNIPER
Steven Spielberg has pulled out as the director of Bradley Cooper's American Sniper. I was actually excited to see Spielberg's version of this story on the big screen, but according to Deadline, Spielberg "couldn’t square his vision of this movie with the budget."
DreamWorks Studios is also pulling out of the film production, and Warner Bros. is now on the hunt to secure another filmmaker. Hopefully the studio can find a good replacement. Spielberg has several other projects to choose from, but at this point there's no word on what his next film will be now.
The movie is an adaptation of the autobiography American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History, written by Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. The movie will simply be called American Sniper, and Cooper will star in the film and produce it.
The project was announced last year when Cooper set it up with Warner Bros. "The book reveals how Texas native Kyle came to record the highest number of sniper kills for an American. The book has been praised for its frankness in telling a first-person account of a warrior who shoots from far and close distances. Giving the book its emotional core are passages from Kyle’s wife, who slowly watches as her husband’s affection turns from her to the SEALs and war."
Here's the full description of the book:
He is the deadliest American sniper ever, called “the devil” by the enemies he hunted and “the legend” by his Navy SEAL brothers . . .
From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. The Pentagon has officially confirmed more than 150 of Kyles kills (the previous American record was 109), but it has declined to verify the astonishing total number for this book. Iraqi insurgents feared Kyle so much they named him al-Shaitan (“the devil”) and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle earned legendary status among his fellow SEALs, Marines, and U.S. Army soldiers, whom he protected with deadly accuracy from rooftops and stealth positions. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle’s masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time.
A native Texan who learned to shoot on childhood hunting trips with his father, Kyle was a champion saddle-bronc rider prior to joining the Navy. After 9/11, he was thrust onto the front lines of the War on Terror, and soon found his calling as a world-class sniper who performed best under fire. He recorded a personal-record 2,100-yard kill shot outside Baghdad; in Fallujah, Kyle braved heavy fire to rescue a group of Marines trapped on a street; in Ramadi, he stared down insurgents with his pistol in close combat. Kyle talks honestly about the pain of war—of twice being shot and experiencing the tragic deaths of two close friends.
American Sniper also honors Kyles fellow warriors, who raised hell on and off the battlefield. And in moving first-person accounts throughout, Kyles wife, Taya, speaks openly about the strains of war on their marriage and children, as well as on Chris.
Adrenaline-charged and deeply personal, American Sniper is a thrilling eyewitness account of war that only one man could tell.
Via: Deadline