LOS ANGELES — Three of the men who helped thwart a terrorist attack on a train bound for Paris will star in Clint Eastwood’s upcoming film about the incident, “The 15:17 to Paris,” Warner Bros. Pictures has announced.
Anthony Sadler, Oregon National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and U.S. Air Force Airman First Class Spencer Stone will appear as themselves in the film, alongside Jenna Fisher (“The Office”) and Judy Greer (“War for the Planet of the Apes”).
The movie will follow the lives of the three men leading up to August 2015, when the trio successfully stopped an alleged ISIS terrorist from launching a gun attack on a high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris.
The men, who have been friends since meeting as young boys in California, were hailed as heroes after the thwarted attack, as were two other passengers.
The movie is based on a book written by the trio and author Jeffrey E. Stern, called “The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train, and Three American Heroes.”
The film is set to be Eastwood’s latest project based on a real event involving an act of courage. He also directed 2016’s “Sully,” about the passenger jet pilot who saved hundreds by pulling off an against-the-odds landing on the Hudson River, and “American Sniper,” which told the story of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle.
This is the first time Eastwood has cast the real-life person or people that inspired the story on which his film is based.
