Jake Gyllenhaal will star in the Lost Airman. Gyllenhaal also starred in the movie Jarhead. Jarhead is a 2005 American biographical war drama film based on U.S. Marine Anthony Swofford’s 2003 memoir of the same name.
He also starred in the movie Brothers. Brothers was a movie about a young man that comforts his older brother’s wife and children after he goes missing in Afghanistan.
The material for the Lost Airman seems very good. Time will tell if it is Oscar worthy and popular with fans of war films.
Shot down over France in 1943, turret gunner Arthur Meyerowitz managed to evade the Nazis for nearly six months with the help of members of the French Resistance.
The movie will be based on Seth Meyerowitz’s book The Lost Airman: A True Story Of Escape From Nazi-Occupied France.
Hiding out in the French countryside, Meyerowitz became friends with Marcel Talliander, the founder of the legendary French resistance group Morhange.
Alongside another heroic pilot, British fighter pilot R.F.W. Cleaver, they orchestrated a plan to get Meyerowitz out of the country and to safety. Amazon Studios has grabbed the rights to the story and the material, and the team will now look for a writer and director.
Here’s a synopsis from their page:
For fans of Unbroken, the remarkable, untold story of World War II American Air Force turret-gunner Staff Sergeant Arthur Meyerowitz, who was shot down over Nazi-occupied France and evaded Gestapo pursuers for more than six months before escaping to freedom.
Bronx-born top turret-gunner Arthur Meyerowitz was on his second mission when he was shot down in 1943. He was one of only two men on the B-24 Liberator known as “Harmful Lil Armful” who escaped death or immediate capture on the ground.
After fleeing the wreck, Arthur knocked on the door of an isolated farmhouse, whose owners hastily took him in. Fortunately, his hosts not only despised the Nazis but had a tight connection to the French resistance group Morhange and its founder, Marcel Taillandier. Arthur and Taillandier formed an improbable bond as the resistance leader arranged for Arthur’s transfers among safe houses in southern France, shielding him from the Gestapo.
Based on recently declassified material, exclusive personal interviews, and extensive research into the French Resistance, The Lost Airman tells the tense and riveting story of Arthur’s trying months in Toulouse—masquerading as a deaf mute and working with a downed British pilot to evade the Nazis—and of his hair-raising journey to freedom involving a perilous trek over the Pyrenees and a voyage aboard a fishing boat with U-boats lurking below and Luftwaffe fighters looming above. With photographs and maps included, this is a never-before-told true story of endurance, perseverance, and escape during World War II.