Phillip Noyce. (Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.)
Australian director Phillip Noyce will follow Mel Gibson into WWII with the action film, The Devil’s Brigade.
Like Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge, The Devil’s Brigade is an adaptation of a true story about an exceptional American soldier. In Noyce’s film, the lead character, Davie Berman, is a Jewish member of an Italian mob, who helped turn the tide of the war in Italy by organising the Sicilian Cosa Nostra to aid the American effort in southern Italy.
Noyce, who has been developing an adaptation of Tim Winton’s novel Dirt Music in Australia for many years, has been a prolific television director recently on programs including Crisis, Roots and The Resident. He is currently shooting another TV drama series for Fox, The Resident, starring Emily VanCamp and Matt Czurchry.
His feature adaptation of Joe Sharkey’s crime thriller, Above Suspicion, starring Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke, Jack Huston, Thora Birch, Johnny Knoxville and Australian Sophie Lowe (Beautiful Kate) has been shot but is yet to be dated for release.
The Devil’s Brigade will be shot in France later in the year, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Jonas McCord, writer of Malice and The Body, will write the screenplay. Casting has not been confirmed. Moshe Diamont (The Black Dahlia, Hard Target) will produce the film and Foresight Unlimited will handle international sales.
A 1968 film of the same name, featuring another WWII mission in the Italian Campaign, starred William Holden and Cliff Robertson, is believed to be unrelated.
Noyce, who is best known for the Angelina Jolie thriller Salt and local hits Rabbit-Proof Fence and Newsfront, is represented by the Cameron Creswell Agency in Australia