Jodie Foster has her latest directorial project lined up. She’s set to direct a drama revolving around the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa, which will be based on Seymour Reit‘s book The Day They Stole The Mona Lisa.
The film is being fully financed by Los Angeles Media Fund, who have had a good week at the Sundance Film Festival. They are sorting through offers on three of their films – Shirley, Some Kind Of Heaven, and Summertime. Jeffrey Soros, one half of the LAMF principals alongside Simon Horsman, said of the project:
“This happened in 1911, and it was the thing that made the Mona Lisa so famous […] This is in the mould of The Thomas Crown Affair, with The Sting also a plot device comp. It is a fun story, and the crime itself is not sophisticated. Our story mixes truth and fiction, and the focus is on the characters behind orchestrating the theft”.
The robbery, which took place at the Louvre in Paris, was perpetrated by Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia, who believed that Leonardo da Vinci‘s painting should have been displayed in Italy. Peruggia kept the painting for two years and was caught when he attempted to sell it to the director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It was returned to the Louvre in 1914.
Foster’s last directorial effort was the thriller Money Monster. She is also attached to both star and direct in the English-language remake of Scandinavian thriller, Woman At War.
#Peace.Love.MonaLisa
