Amazon and MGM Studios acquired the rights to a new spy thriller film project titled Best of Enemies, and Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale are officially set to star. Eric Warren Singer is writing the script and Charles Rover is producing. This entire creative team previously worked together on American Hustle.
There is also a possibility that Cooper, who recently directed Maestro, will helm the film, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet. The project was sold to MGM and Amazon after a big bidding war and they paid a high-seven figures for the writer and producer. The film will get a theatrical release.
The movie is based on the book Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War by Eric Dezenhall and Gus Russo. Best of Enemies tells the story of “CIA agent Jack Platt and KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko, a pair of Cold War spies who developed an unlikely friendship at a time when they should have been anything but. Platt and Vasilenko were new entrants to the Washington, D.C. intelligence scene back in 1978, with the former working out of the CIA’s counterintelligence office and the latter, out of the Soviet Embassy. Remarkably, they came to establish strong personal ties, even after each was sent to seduce the other into betraying their country.”
They were “involved with solving some of the most famous spy stories of the 20th century, including the rooting out of Soviet mole Robert Hanssen. While Vasilenko spent some time in a Soviet prison after it came to the government’s attention that he’d been working as a double agent for the U.S., he was ultimately freed with help from the CIA during the Spy Swap of 2010.”
The pair were involved with solving some of the most famous spy stories of the 20th century, including the rooting out of Soviet mole Robert Hanssen. While Vasilenko spent some time in a Soviet prison after it came to the government’s attention that he’d been working as a double agent for the U.S., he ultimately was freed with help from the CIA during the Spy Swap of 2010. Among other advocates during his period of incarceration was none other than American Hustle‘s Robert De Niro.
Cooper will take on the role of Platt, with Bale playing Vasilenko.
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