Following American Sniper and Sully, Clint Eastwood is set to tackle another real-life story, by adapting Jessica Buchanan’s memoir Impossible Odds, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Written by Buchanan and her husband Erik Landelmalm, Impossible Odds recounts her experience of being kidnapped by Somali militants and later rescued by a navy seal team in 2012, while working as a humanitarian aid worker in east Africa.
Buchanan was abducted, along with her co-worker, in 2011 by land pirates. Landemalm tried to work with various agencies to have his wife saved, with President Obama eventually authorising a Seal team to extract the pair.
Brian Helgeland, who worked with Eastwood on Mystic River and Blood River, is reportedly writing the script.
Eastwood recently made headlines for saying young Americans were an “[expletive] generation” in an August interview with Esquire. He also defended Donald Trump’s string of controversial remarks, while promoting his latest film Sully, which has gone to became a major hit for the filmmaker, grossing more than $100 million (Dh367 million) in the US since opening in September. The film, starring Tom Hanks as pilot Chelsey Sullenberger, who became a hero after landing his plane on the Hudson river, is also pegged as a potential Oscar winner.
Sully follows Eastwood’s 2014 success American Sniper, which starred Bradley Cooper as US navy hero Chris Kyle. That film earned $350 million domestically, making it the biggest hit of his career as a director, on top of netting an Oscar nomination for best picture (it won for sound editing).
