Selling Private Lynch
The most famous soldier to emerge from the second Gulf War will write a book about her captivity in Iraq, but won't cooperate with NBC on a TV movie the network is making about her.
The family of former prisoner of war Pfc. Jessica Lynch provided no details on the book project, but the New York Times reported that the family is expected to conclude a deal with Rick Bragg, a former reporter for the Times, for a book to be published by Knopf. The book is to be finished by the end of year.
"The Lynch family has received many offers from people interested in bringing Jessica's story to life," said Randy Coleman, a spokesman for the family. "Jessica and her family have concluded that the most appropriate and complete telling of this story will be in a book, which they will have more to say about soon."
The Times also reported that Lynch has pulled out of a proposed deal to cooperate with a TV movie NBC is making about her captivity.
The newspaper said the Lynch family was close to a deal with NBC, but ultimately decided that a book was the most appropriate forum for her story.
Actress Laura Regan will portray Lynch in the movie, "Saving Jessica Lynch."
Regan, who starred in the 2002 horror movie "They," was cast in the lead role of the TV movie centering on the rescue of the 20-year-old Iraqi prisoner of war, network spokeswoman Cathryn Boxberger said Tuesday.
NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker said the film will be an action-adventure story told from the perspective of Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, the Iraqi lawyer who alerted the U.S. military to Lynch's whereabouts.
The film will focus less on Lynch and more on the experience of her Army unit and her rescuers, Zucker has said.
Lynch was captured March 23 after her 507th Maintenance Company convoy from Fort Bliss, Texas, was ambushed in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. She was retrieved from a hospital in the city on April 1 after al-Rehaief alerted U.S. forces.
She returned home last month to Palestine, W.Va., after a long hospitalization in Washington, D.C.