Steven Spielberg might direct Thank You For Your Service this year

In more non-ROBOPOCALYPSE news, Steven Spielberg may have just added yet another film to his to-do list. To bring you up to speed: the filmmaker recently shot a COLD WAR THRILLER starring Tom Hanks (written by The Coen Brothers) last fall and while he’s still putting final touches on that, he’s starting work on the Roald Dahl adaptation THE BFG, for a summer start. So what's the third potential film he's going to be working on? Again, it's still not ROBOPOCALYPSE sadly; it’s THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE, an adaptation of the David Finkel non-fiction book, which focuses on veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD.

In Thank You for Your Service, Finkel has done something even more extraordinary. Once again, he has embedded with some of the men of the 2-16—but this time he has done it at home, here in the States, after their deployments have ended. He is with them in their most intimate, painful, and hopeful moments as they try to recover, and in doing so, he creates an indelible, essential portrait of what life after war is like—not just for these soldiers, but for their wives, widows, children, and friends, and for the professionals who are truly trying, and to a great degree failing, to undo the damage that has been done. The story Finkel tells is mesmerizing, impossible to put down. With his unparalleled ability to report a story, he climbs into the hearts and minds of those he writes about. Thank You for Your Service is an act of understanding, and it offers a more complete picture than we have ever had of these two essential questions: When we ask young men and women to go to war, what are we asking of them? And when they return, what are we thanking them for?

Interestingly enough, AMERICAN SNIPER scribe Jason Hall is writing this one. You will recall that Spielberg dropped out of directing AMERICAN SNIPER and you can even read his take on the material here. It’s been said that when the film was talked about years ago it would mark a reunion between Spielberg and his LINCOLN star Daniel Day-Lewis. I don’t think anyone would have anything against seeing those two pair up once more, and if Spielberg can finally use some of the ideas he had for Sniper, even better!

What do you think about the potential pairing of Daniel Day-Lewis and Spielberg again? Do you wish he was directing something else, maybe with robots?