In another sign of Netflix’s flexing of its film fortitude, the digital giant has made a seven-figure deal for a film pitch.
Netflix has picked up War Party, an adventure project that has Tom Hardy attached to star and Andrew Dominik, the helmer behind Brad Pitt’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, to direct.
Dominik will co-write the project with Harrison Query. Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Films, which is working with Hardy on his FX period drama Taboo, will produce.
War Party details are being kept in a suppressor, but it is described as a being based on true events and centers on real-life Navy SEALs. Life rights was part of the deal.
Bidding was competitive for the project, with Netflix outflanking Amazon, Universal and Lionsgate, among others, according to sources.
Query is an up-and-coming writer who last fall sold a pitch centering on a true-life exorcism set on a military base to Lionsgate. And he wrote 1970s true-story crime thriller Honor for Sale, with John Hillcoat attached to direct, for Cross Creek. He is repped by UTA and Ground Control.
CAA-repped Dominik made his debut with the gritty prison drama Chopper and followed that up with the lyrical Assassination of Jesse James. He reteamed with Pitt for the crime movie Killing Them Softly and most recently made the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds documentary One More Time With Feeling.
Hardy will next appear on the big screen in Dunkirk, the war drama that reunited him with filmmaker Christopher Nolan. It is set to open in July. The actor is repped by CAA, United Agents in the U.K. and Sloane Offer.
