Jennifer Aniston to Play Soldier's Mom in New Movie

Jack Huston and Jennifer Aniston Join War Pic ‘The Yellow Birds’
Deadline Hollywood
by Anita Busch
October 6, 2015

EXCLUSIVE: Jack Huston is stepping into the role previously eyed by Benedict Cumberbatch in war drama The Yellow Birds opposite Tye Sheridan and Alden Ehrenreich. Jennifer Aniston also is joining the film directed by the project’s new director, Alexandre Moors. Based on the novel by Iraq War vet Kevin Powers, the film marks the second project to go before the cameras for Mark Canton and Courtney Solomon’s Cinelou Films.

It was first announced for sale at Cannes with Cumberbatch, Sheridan and Will Poulter starring and David Lowery directing. Lowery adapted the book with Powers for the screen.

Financed by Cinelou, the story follows two young soldiers who become friends in boot camp and the elder (the 21-year-old Ehrenreich) promises to take care of his buddy (Sheridan), but it becomes increasingly difficult in wartime. Huston plays Staff Sgt. Sterling. Aniston plays the younger boy’s mother.
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On the Ground
‘The Yellow Birds,’ by Kevin Powers
New York Times
By BENJAMIN PERCY
OCT. 4, 2012

Joao Silva for The New York Times

At the age of 17, Kevin Powers enlisted in the Army and eventually served as a machine-gunner in Iraq, where the sky is “vast and catacombed with clouds,” where soldiers stay awake on fear and amphetamines and Tabasco sauce daubed into their eyes, where rifles bristle from rooftops and bullets sound like “small rips in the air.” Now he has channeled his experience into “The Yellow Birds,” a first novel as compact and powerful as a footlocker full of ammo.

In the northern city of Al Tafar, 21-year-old Pvt. John Bartle and his platoon engage in a bloody campaign to control the city. Before his deployment Bartle promised the mother of 18-year-old Pvt. Daniel Murphy he would take care of her son, bring him back alive. It is a promise that, as Powers reveals from the earliest pages, he will not keep. But in the meantime they suffer through basic training together, followed by Iraqi street fights that leave rooftops covered in brass casings and doorsteps splashed with blood — all under the command of the growly, battle-­scarred Sergeant Sterling, who punches them in the face one moment and claps them on the back the next, ordering them to combat both the insurgents and the mental stress that threaten to send them home in a box with a flag draped over the top.
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