Angelina Jolie turns attention to new war biopic

Angelina Jolie is in talks to return to action with a new biopic about a top U.S. Air Force pilot whose rescue helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan.
The newly-single star, who filed for divorce from Brad Pitt on 19 September (16), is throwing herself back into her work and is circling the planned adaptation of Major Mary Jennings Hegar’s upcoming memoir, Shoot Like A Girl: One Woman’s Dramatic Fight In Afghanistan and on the Home Front.
Her book, set for release in May (17), chronicles Hegar’s heroic turn to save herself and three American soldiers she had been sent to take out of the battle zone in Afghanistan after her aircraft suffered a serious hit by the Taliban.
She was awarded the prestigious Purple Heart medal for her daring rescue and escape, and became only the sixth woman in history to receive another top military accolade, the Distinguished Flying Cross, reports Deadline.com.
Hegar also fought and won a lawsuit brought against officials at the U.S. Government’s Department of Defense, which banned women from engaging in direct combat. The Combat Exclusion Policy was repealed in 2013 after it was deemed unconstitutional.
If Jolie signs on, it will mark her first gig in an action film since 2010 thriller The Tourist, starring opposite Johnny Depp.
She subsequently focused her efforts on directing, taking charge of films In The Land Of Blood and Honey, Unbroken, and 2015’s By The Sea, in which she ironically featured alongside her now-estranged husband Pitt as a troubled couple which attempts to fix its broken marriage during a vacation in France.