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Steven Spielberg has signed on to direct Amblin Entertainment’s adaptation of David Kertzer’s Pulitzer Prize-winner “The Kidnapping Of Edgardo Mortara”, reports Deadline.
Mark Rylance is on board to star as Pope Pius IX in the film which has an adapted screenplay by Tony Kushner.
Not only does the Spielberg/Rylance pairing reunite the “Bridge of Spies” duo, but the “Spies” producing team of Spielberg, Marc Platt and Kristie Macosko Krieger are on board to produce the adaptation.
Production will begin in early 2017 for release in the fourth quarter of that year.
The book is described as:
Bologna: nightfall, June 1858. A knock sounds at the door of the Jewish merchant Momolo Mortara. Two officers of the Inquisition bust inside and seize Mortara’s six-year-old son, Edgardo. As the boy is wrenched from his father’s arms, his mother collapses. The reason for his abduction: the boy had been secretly “baptized” by a family servant. According to papal law, the child is therefore a Catholic who can be taken from his family and delivered to a special monastery where his conversion will be completed.
