After working with Brad Pitt on Killing Them Softly and 12 Years a Slave (which Pitt’s Plan B produced), Scoot McNairy will be teaming up with the actor once again for Netflix’s War Machine, which is being directed by The Rover helmer David Michod and sees Pitt playing four-star U.S. military general modeled after General Stanley McChrystal.
Based on Michael Hastings’ The Operators: The Wild And Terrifying Inside Story Of America’s War In Afghanistan, War Machine will satirize the “handling of the Afghanistan war and the people who were in charge of it.” That bestselling book was an expanded account of Hastings’ experiences traveling with McChrystal, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in the Afghanistan war.
The journalist’s original Rolling Stone article, “The Runaway General” gobsmacked the general population with its unmasking of McChrystal and his staff as individuals with undisguised contempt for the foreign government officials they were supposed to be supporting. The article, which found the general also badmouthing the White House and the approach America was taking to dealing with Afghanistan, led to McChrystal’s forcible return to Washington, D.C., where he tendered his resignation.
Having paid $30 million for the film, War Machine is definitely one of the streaming service’s biggest acquisitions to date. And with the amount of A-list talent that it’s currently attracting, you can bet that it’s going to make some serious waves when it drops. Casting is only now just heating up as well, so expect more announcements to come very shortly.