Separated by war. Tested by battle. Bound by friendship.

Depending on who’s doing the predictions, it’s destined to be Saving Private Ryan meets The Black Stallion.? Or National Velvet meets Sergeant York.? Anne Frank reading Black Beauty.? Worst case scenario: A PBS Masterpiece Theater for the horsey set. (That’s us, by the way.)

“It”, of course, is Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, due in theaters the week after Christmas. Or, to be precise, exactly 90 days from today. But who’s counting (besides me)?

And so we have to wait a few more months, but soon the pre-movie promotion will begin. With luck, it will focus on the real war horses who inspired the story, and the honor due them.

And in the meantime, we can analyze the poster, which showed up on the web today in a size big enough to have a good look. It shows actor Jeremy Irvine standing in front of a horse wearing what appears to be an artillery harness. Is that a broken snap on the bit?

Did you know that many of the horses that fought in World War I were from America–before the United States ever entered the war? Thousands and thousands of horses and mules from the Midwest were purchased by French agents and shipped off to war. “Giddyap” and “whoa” were traded for “avant” and “arret”.

Let’s just say that none of those purchasing agents was buying any round-trip tickets.

But what if someone had gone after one of those horses, had vowed to find his horse and bring him home, alive?

From the show-biz web buzz, it sounds like he might bring home his horse, or maybe an Academy Award. In the best of all worlds, he’d bring home both. But endings like that only happened in Hollywood, not on the battlefields of France. Did Spielberg stick to the script of the book and play?

See you in line at the movies on December 28th and we’ll find out together!