Chris Weitz has had quite the varied career as a director, from his uncredited work alongside his brother Paul Weitz on American Pie, to their Oscar-nominated comedy/drama About a Boy, to his solo efforts on The Golden Compass and The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Though he hasn't directed a picture since the Oscar-nominated 2011 film A Better Life, Weitz is now in early discussions to direct a new film for MGM about the hunt for and capture of Nazi Adolf Eichmann.

As Deadline reports, the untitled film scripted by Matthew Orton will follow the team who tracked down Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust. This guy is pretty high up on the list of real-life villains. He was charged with facilitating, organizing, and managing the logistics of the mass deportation of Jews to ghettoes, concentration camps, and ultimately to extermination facilities throughout German-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II. The globe-trotting hunt led by Israeli agents of Mossad and Shin Bet tracked Eichmann to Austria, and then Argentina. He was brought back to Israel and tried for war crimes, which resulted in his death by hanging in 1962.


chris-weitz
Image via Summit Entertainment

MGM snapped up this script just this past November and is looking to move quickly on its development. Though the studio hasn't partnered up with a distributor for this picture, Deadlines notes that they're eager to capitalize on the momentum provided by Spectre and Creed, with remakes of Ben-Hur and The Magnificent Seven also in the pipeline. The tone of the "untitled hunt for Eichmann" picture is being described as closer to Argo than Munich, but either way it will be a dramatic thriller for sure.

In the meantime, Weitz had recently turned in writing efforts for the TV adaptation of About a Boy and has penned the screenplay for Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars StoryThat particular anthology film opens December 16th of this year.

nazi-adolf-eichmann