After co-writing the WWII drama Valkyrie, Chris McQuarrie has turned to writing the WWI drama No Man’s Land, says Variety.
The battlefield drama is being developed as a co-production between 2929 Productions and Spitfire Pictures, and the film will be financed by 2929 Entertainment partners Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban.
Nigel Sinclair and Guy East will produce, and their Spitfire is co-financing development with 2929. Wagner and Cuban are executive producing with 2929 Productions president Marc Butan.
No Man’s Land will use three fictional characters to illustrate the complex reasons why the various European powers chose sides to fight WWI, and how the use of machine guns, tanks and other technology led to unimaginable carnage.
The drama will focus on three characters: an American ambulance driver in France who joins the French Foreign Legion and eventually fights for the Americans when the U.S. enters the war; a British soldier wrongly accused of cowardice; and a German soldier mired in the trenches.
Among the conflicts depicted will be the Battle of the Somme in 1916. British troops fired 1 million rounds and then charged, only to discover the Germans lying in wait in tunnels; 19,000 British troops were killed by German machine gun fire.
