Michael Bay will (already) make a film about American pilots rescued in Iran
Barely two months ago, the crash of an American F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet in the heart of Iranian territory made the news. The film is already being prepared.
It is a military operation that is still hot in the news. But Michael Bay is already preparing his cinema version.
The director of Transformers And Pearl Harbor will stage a film dedicated to the spectacular rescue of two American pilots in Iran during Operation “Epic Fury”.
According to the American press, the project is being developed at Universal Pictures. Michael Bay will also meet two collaborators from 13 Hours : screenwriter Scott Gardenhour and producer Erwin Stoff. They were already telling, at the time, of a real American military operation having taken place in Libya.
The new film will adapt a still unpublished book by journalist and author Mitchell Zuckoff, expected from HarperCollins in 2027. The work will return to this rescue mission carried out last April, after the crash of an American F-15E Strike Eagle fighter plane in the heart of Iranian territory.
The second F-15 pilot has been safely rescued—a powerful reminder of the courage, skill, and dedication of our service members operating under such dangerous conditions. I’m grateful that both pilots are safe, along with the rescue team that extracted him from behind enemy lines…
— Congressman Mike Lawler (@RepMikeLawler) April 5, 2026
Operation “Epic Fury”, approved by Donald Trump from February 2026, aimed to carry out several military actions against Iran.
But it is above all this ultra-risky extraction of two pilots behind enemy lines which seems to have immediately attracted Hollywood… and particularly Michael Bay, a filmmaker who has always been fascinated by the American army and XXL demonstrations of military power.
The director also maintains a long relationship with the Pentagon, which he has often contacted to give a more realistic dimension to his blockbusters, Transformers has 13 Hours passing through Pearl Harbor.
After the rescue, Donald Trump celebrated the operation on Truth Social in a particularly emphatic message, welcoming “one of the most daring search and rescue missions in U.S. history”. The American president explained that the pilot, injured and hunted in the Iranian mountains, had finally been recovered thanks to a vast American air mobilization. In short, a perfectly calibrated subject for Michael Bay.
