Clint Eastwood set to direct film about France train attack

Actor plans to adapt book The 15:17 to Paris that retells how three American servicemen thwarted a terrorist attempt aboard a high-speed train in 2015

Clint Eastwood will continue his recent run of projects that depict American heroism after it was confirmed that his next film will dramatize the attempted terrorist attack on a French train that was stopped by three American servicemen.

The director will adapt The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train, and Three American Heroes, which retells how Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos stopped a heavily armed gunman on a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris in 2015.

The 15:17 to Paris comes on the heels of Eastwood’s 2016 film Sully, which focused on Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who landed a passenger jet in the Hudson river, and American Sniper, which starred Bradley Cooper and told the story of Chris Kyle.

One of the men who foiled the attack, Spencer Stone, needed open heart surgery after being stabbed in late 2015 in an unrelated attack.

Guardian staff

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