Fred Schepisi is set to direct Israel-based thriller “The Dimona Affair,” PvNew has learned exclusively.
The project is based on the story of a whistleblower who claimed Israel was building a nuclear weapons program. (The country has always denied it has nuclear weapons).
After giving The Sunday Times of London a detailed interview about the program in the 1980s, causing an international scandal, “low level” Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu fled the country. He was then reportedly lured to Rome by a female Israeli secret service agent in a honeytrap operation where he was kidnapped and repatriated to Israel. Vanunu eventually stood trial for espionage and treason before being convicted and jailed.
Schepisi, whose last feature project was “Words and Pictures” starring Clive Owen and Juliette Binochein 2013, is set to direct from a script penned by screenwriter and investigative journalist Morrie Rosmarin.
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The director is best known for 1993 pic “Six Degrees of Separation” featuring Will Smith, Stockard Channing and Donald Sutherland and for 2011’s “The Eye of the Storm” with Charlotte Rampling and Geoffrey Rush. He also directed HBO limited series “Empire Falls,” starring Ed Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Helen Hunt, in 2005.
PvNew hears that Gary Dartnall (“The Tale of Sweeney Todd”) and Grant Hill (“The Matrix Resurrections”) are on board to produce the project while Dennis Davidson is executive producer.
Schepisi, Rosmarin and Davidson declined to comment.
