A new made-for-television mini-series from Samuel Goldwyn Films is on the drawing board. Michael Emerson is currently searching for a writer who will be able to take the book, Battle for Baqubah: Killing Our Way Out, and transform it into the mini-series that has been given the working title of The Surge.
The book was written by First Sgt. Robert Colella and is his personal account of the raw street fight with Al Qaeda over fifteen months in the volatile Diyala Province of Iraq in 2007. FS Colella served with B Company 1-12 Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Texas. 1-12 Cavalry were known as the Bonecrushers. This story is how the author and his fellow Bonecrushers experienced the bewildering change in the fighting in and around Baqubah as it went from a sectarian fight between the Sunni and Shiite militants to a jihad against the American forces, who were at the time undermanned and widely dispersed.
Emerson said, “This is one of those incredible true stories where ordinary men and women are thrown into an extraordinary, history-changing conflict where success was accomplished by bringing together the ‘ground pounders’ of Bravo Company, a Stryker combat unit and an Apache air combat unit to defeat a well-armed, well-trained force 10 times their size.”
Emerson plans to include both ground forces experiences as well as Apache helicopter missions, bringing the two together to show how the lives of American soldiers were impacted.
Emerson already has two documentary-based mini-series to his credit, World War II in HD and Vietnam in HD.