Abi Morgan To Adapt ‘Ashley’s War’ For Fox 2000 And Reese Witherspoon

Fox 2000 has set Abi Morgan to adapt the Gayle Tzemach Lemmon book Ashley’s War: The Untold Story Of A Team of Women Soldiers On The Special Ops Battlefield. The studio, led by Elizabeth Gabler, won an auction in March at a time when several military-themed books were selling after the outsized grosses of American Sniper. Pacific Standard’s Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea are producing with Natalie Krinsky, and the expectation is that Witherspoon will play a major role. Book tells the story of the creation by the U.S. Army Special Operations Command of a pilot program that allowed elite women soldiers on the battlefield with Green Berets and Army Rangers in Afghanistan in 2010. The unit, CST-2, brought together a hand-picked group of women from the Army, and that included 1st Lt. Ashley White, who would become the first CST member killed in action.

Morgan is best known for scripting the Steve McQueen-directed Shame, and the Meryl Streep-as-Maggie Thatcher drama The Iron Lady. She followed with the Sarah Gavron-directed Suffragette, which stars Streep, Helena Bonham Carter, Carey Mulligan and Brendan Gleeson, with Focus releasing the film on October 23. She co-wrote the Suzanne Bier-directed Rules Of Inheritance, is adapting Shakespeare’s Taming Of The Shrew and is working on the feature version of Little House On The Prairie for producer Scott Rudin and Sony.

Morgan is repped by CAA and Independent Talent Group.

– Deadline