Sony Enlists Director Daniel Espinosa, George Clooney’s Smokehouse For ‘Red Platoon’

EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures has set Safe House helmer Daniel Espinosa to direct an adaptation of the Clinton Romesha book Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor. George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Smokehouse Pictures has come aboard the film as producer. Sony optioned the book last year. Suicide Squad 2‘s Adam Cozad wrote the script, and Josh Bratman is also producing.

Medal of Honor recipient Romesha was part of Red Platoon and the Black Knight Troop which in 2009 prepared to shut down Command Outpost Keating. The outpost was the most remote and inaccessible in a string of bases built by the U.S. military in Nuristan and Kunar to keep Taliban insurgents from commuting between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It took three years for military to understand what was instantly clear to the men guarding it: The outpost was too isolated and dangerous to defend. After a series of smaller attacks, the Taliban came with everything it had, on October 3, 2009. While Romesha and his compatriots beat back the assault after 14 hours, they lost eight men in the balance. Romesha spearheaded both the defense of the outpost and the counterattack that drove the Taliban back.

Deal puts Espinosa back in business with Sony, which released the sci-fi thriller Life. Red Platoon potentially falls right into the filmmaker’s wheelhouse, and could follow in the footsteps of great war films like Black Hawk Down and We Were Soldiers.

Espinosa is repped by WME and Magnolia Entertainment.

Sony declined comment.