Deadline reports that Ben Affleck has signed up to direct and star in Universal Pictures’ World war II drama Ghost Army, based on Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles’ book The Ghost Army of World War II: How One Top-Secret Unit Deceived the Enemy with Inflatable Tanks, Sound Effects, and Other Audacious Fakery.
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Per the report, the story will focus on “a secret force that relied on sleight of hand and illusion to trick the Nazis in 1944.” This force, consisting of Bill lass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane and Jack Masey, along with 1,100 men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, and fittingly dubbed Ghost Army, went into France and deployed a massive collection of inflatable tanks and sound effects equipment to create “the illusion of troop strength on European battlefields to trick the Germans into deploying forces in the wrong places.”
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Affleck will rework the screenplay, which is said to be based on Netflix’s documentary Ghost Army and produce via his Pearl Street Films alongside Andrew Lazar and his Mad Chance Productions banner.
Affleck has had a rocky last few years with the poor reception to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Accountant, Justice League, and his recent directorial effort Live by Night. His most recent feature, the Netflix drama Triple Frontier, was reportedly viewed by 52 million households in its first month of release.
