Clint Eastwood's next movie stars the 3 real-life Americans who stopped a terrorist plot on a French train - here's the inspiring trailer

Warner Bros./YouTube

"The 15:17 to Paris."

• Clint Eastwood's latest movie looks at the three Americans who stopped a terrorist attack on a French train in 2015.
• Eastwood cast the real-life friends to play themselves in the movie.

In August 2015 on a high-speed train in France, three American friends, two of them off-duty members of the US Armed Forces, thwarted a terrorist act after a man with an assault rifle opened fire in the train. Four people were injured and there were no fatalities.

The three Americans instantly became heroes and wrote a book about their ordeal, which has now become a movie directed by Clint Eastwood.

This all sounds like standard protocol for an incredible act of bravery like this, but it gets more interesting: Eastwood cast the three real-life friends who stopped the attack to be the leads in the movie.

"The 15:17 to Paris," which is also the title of the book about the attack, is Eastwood's latest based-on-a-true story movie ("American Sniper," "Sully"), and in telling this one he has Airman First Class Spencer Stone, Specialist Alek Skarlatos, and Anthony Sadler reenacting their heroics on the screen (Stone sustained injuries while taking down the gunman).

The trailer was released on Wednesday and looks beyond the acts on that August day, and also back on how the friends got to that moment in their lives through flashbacks of their childhood and Stone and Skarlatos' military service.

Watch the trailer below. It's quite inspiring. Warner Bros. will release the movie on February 9.