Cohen Media Group has acquired screen rights to Ben Macintyre’s bestselling book Operation Mincemeat.
Macintyre’s nonfiction bestseller, subtitled How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, tells the real-life story of two intelligence officers who outfitted a corpse with false papers indicating an Allied invasion on southern Europe through Greece, rather than Sicily. Then they pushed the body into the water off the coast of Spain and waited for the Germans to take the bait. Much more subterfuge ensued.
[UPDATE: Several commenters have pointed out that this true story was turned into a film once before, the Ronald Neame-directed The Man Who Never Was, released by Fox in 1956.]
“Operation Mincemeat is a book that has tremendous tense action with an emotional story,” said Cohen Media Group chairman and CEO Charles S. Cohen. “When brought to the big screen it will remind Hollywood of their most classic films.“
CMG recently released Outside the Law, and it will next release My Afternoons With Marguerite, starring Gérard Depardieu, in May. Cohen was also an executive producer of the 2008 drama Frozen River.
Cohen Media Group’s Stephen Dembitzer negotiated the deal with CAA on behalf of MacIntyre.
“I am delighted that CMG has acquired the film rights to Operation Mincemeat, one of the most exciting, important and bizarre true stories of the Second World War,” said Macintyre. “It is a casting director’s dream, with a cast that includes a brilliant barrister, a short-sighted racing driver, a beautiful MI6 secretary, a raft of spies and, of course, a corpse.”
