THUNDER RUN (Cast News)

•  THUNDER RUN FINALLY MOVING FORWARD

Simon West's Thunder Run was first announced for developmentfour long years ago, but we happy to say that the film is finally movingforward. With this new good news, came better news, with Freedom Films alsoannouncing that Gerard Butler, Matthew McConaughey and Sam Worthington havejoined the project.

Based on David Zucchino and Mark Bowden's nonfiction book"Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad," the film willbe shot using motion-capture technology and rendered as a 3D CGI adventure. Thebook itself is officially described as follows:

      Matthew McConaughey                  Gerard Butler                        Sam Worthington

“In one of the boldest gambles in modern military history,just three battalions and fewer than a thousand men launched a violent thrustof tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles into the heart of a city of 5 millionpeople and, in three bloody days of combat, ended the Iraqi war. Thunder Run isthe story of the surprise assault on Baghdad—one of the most decisive battlesin American combat history—by the Spartan Brigade, the Second Brigade of theThird Infantry Division (Mechanized).

Facing Iraqi forces dug into bunkers and firing fromrooftops, the brigade punched a hole through the heart of Baghdad with ahigh-speed charge to Saddam Hussein’s presidential palace and military paradegrounds. Many Iraqi soldiers fled or surrendered during the onslaught, butthousands of Republican Guards, Fedayeen militiamen, and Arab mercenaries stoodand fought, challenging seventy-ton Abrams tanks in Toyota pickup trucks,school buses, taxicabs, Chevrolet Caprices, ambulances, and garbage trucks.

Iraqi forces destroyed the brigade’s command center, cuttingoff communications and burning a fleet of signal vehicles. The Iraqis alsoambushed the brigade’s resupply column, killing two sergeants and setting fueland ammunition tankers ablaze in an attack that nearly cut off the main assaultcolumn. And even as it appeared that the brigade was seizing control of thecapital on the battle’s third day, a fierce counterattack across the TigrisRiver trapped an American tank company under withering fire and forced aretreat. With the shadow of Mogadishu hanging over every member of the SpartanBrigade, the capture of Baghdad was a brutal and terrifying three days of urbanwarfare.”