Jamie Bell starring in Eastwoods Flags

I guess you all know the 19 year old Jamie Bell from Stephen Daldry's "Billy Elliot". Besides starring in "The Chumscrubber" which hits cinemas tomorrow and Peter Jackson's upcoming "King Kong", the actor now is set to star in Clint Eastwood's WW2 drama "Flags of our Fathers".

Based on James Bradley's book "Flags of our Fathers", the movie will be placed at the Battle of Iwo Jima, which took place in the winter of 1945. This battle was a turning point in the Pacific Theater. In 36 days of fighting there were 25,851 US casualties (1 in 3 were killed or wounded). Of these, 6,825 American boys were killed. Virtually all 22,000 Japanese perished.

One of the outcomes was one of World War II's most enduring images. The photograph of six soldiers raising an American flag on the flank of Mount Suribachi, which was the island's commanding high point. One of the six was Navy corpsman John Bradley. Bradley never mentioned his experiences to his family, and it was only after his death in 1994 that his son James discovered his father's heroism.

Co-produced by DreamWorks Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures the film is scheduled to start shooting this month, and it will be filmed partly in Iceland.