It was his mission… His driving ambition… It required skill. Fortitude. And lashings of dosh. No, it’s not the plot for New Line’s adaptation of Ben Macintyre’s book Agent Zigzag: A True Story Of Espionage, Love And Betrayal, but rather the story behind New Line honcho Bob Shaye’s quest to nab the rights to it.
After reading an enthusiastic review in the New York Times, Shaye apparently bested Warners (which, in an ironic twist made a movie called Triple Cross based on the same story in 1966) in a clash to get the film rights to the story, which finds Eddie Chapman, criminal and con artist who was trained by the Nazis at the start of World War Two. He became a master spy, but fortunately for us Brits, he contacted MI5 while on a mission in Britain and became a double agent.
Tom Hanks is co-producing the movie through his Playtone company, though there’s no sign he’ll consider starring. In fact, there’s no cast, director or even a writer assigned yet.
Comments
saperk9
Oct 5th 2009, 10:07
In Jersey in 1941 my father was in the same cell as Eddie Chapman, famed triple agent. See "Triple Cross" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Cross_(1966_film) Christopher Plummer acted Eddie's part I recall.... Read more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Chapman Dad was "shopped" by Faramus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Faramus who had been beating his pregnant girlfriend, and my father advised him, that another raised hand, and he'd kill him! As soon as Faramus got hold of one of Dad's RAF leaflets, dropped over Dad's house at Portlet Bay, he gave it to the civil police, who need not have taken it further, but sent it on to the Gestapo! After 28 days interrogation by Gestapo, Dad was imprisoned in Ochenhausen for the duration, but Faramus got Malthusan, maybe some form of divine justice?
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