Actor Ben Kingsley on 'The Tonight Show,' August 2015. (Screen capture: YouTube)
Ben Kingsley has reportedly been cast to play Adolf Eichmann in a movie version of the story of capture of the Nazi mastermind by Israel’s Mossad spy service.
Kingsley, who won an Oscar for his 1982 portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi, has been cast opposite Oscar Isaac, who will play Peter Malkin, Deadline Hollywood reported. Malkin was head of the Mossad team that tracked Eichmann to Argentina, where he was living under an assumed identity, and smuggled him back to Israel.
The movie, titled “Operation Finale,” is to be directed by Chris Weitz, known for directing “American Pie,” “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” and for co-writing the Star Wars movie “Rogue One.”
The script for the movie was acquired by MGM in 2015 from writer Matthew Orton.
This 1961 file photo shows Adolf Eichmann standing in his glass cage in the Jerusalem courtroom where he was tried and convicted of war crimes committed during World War II. (AP Photo,b/w file)
Eichmann, one of the main organizers of the Holocaust, escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp after World War II and fled to Argentina in 1950, where he lived until he was snatched by Mossad agents in Buenos Aires in May 1960 and smuggled to Israel.
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The ability of the security services to bring him to justice was a source of pride for the fledgling Jewish state. His trial and execution riveted the nation and brought it face to face with the horrors of the Holocaust.
Eichmann was sentenced to death and hanged on June 1, 1962. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered in the sea.
Shooting is scheduled to begin in Argentina in the fall.
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